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I 



LITERARY LIVES 

EDITED BY 

W. ROBERTSON NICOLL 



JOHN BUNYAN 



LITERARY LIVES 

Edited by W. Robertson NicoU, LL.D. 

MATTHEW ARNOLD. By G. W. E. RusseU. 
CARDINAL NEWMAN. By Williain Barry, D.D. 
JOHN BUNYAN. By W. Hale White. 
COVENTRY PATMORE. By Edmxmd Gosse. 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. By Clement K. Shorter. 
R. H. HUTTON. By W. Robertson Nicoll. 
GOETHE. By Edward Dowden. 
HAZLITT. By Louise Imogen Guiney. 

Each Volume, Illustrated, $i .00 net. Postage 10 cts . 



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JOHN BUNYAN 



wf%ALE WHITE 

AUTHOR OF "MARK RUTHERFORD," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1904 



UBnARYof CONGRE^SS 
Two Copies Heceiveu 



CLASS O. XXcnTI •»' 



COPY B. 



Copyright, 1904, ijv 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Published, October, 1904 



TROVr OIKECTOfiY 
PniNTIMQ AND BOOKBINDINQ 
HEW YORK 



/ am indebted to Dr. Brown's John Bun y an 
for my knowledge of many facts of Bunyan*s life, 

W. H, IV. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Life and "Grace Abounding" ... i 



CHAPTER n 
The Preacher 65 

CHAPTER HI 
"The Pilgrim's Progress" 106 

CHAPTER IV 

The "Life and Death of Mr. Badman " . 152 

CHAPTER V 
The "Holy War" 166 

CHAPTER VI 

Some Reflections on Bunyan and on Puri- 
tanism 198 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

John Bunyan, from a Portrait by Robert White 

Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Map of Bedfordshire and Bedford, 1610 . . . i 

The Old Bridge, Bedford 16, 

Banyan's House, St. Cuthbert's Street, Bedford . 32 - 

The Warrant for Bunyan's Arrest in 1675 . . 48 

Bunyan's Cottage, Elstow 64' 

Elstow Village Green, Showing the Stump of the 

Old Cross 80^ 

Village Street of Elstow 96 

Elstow Church, Showing the Detached Tower . 128 

Pulpit in Elstow Church 144 

Bell in the Detached Belfry of Elstow Church . 160 

The Moot Hall on Elstow Village Green . . 176 












5^ n 









THE LIFE AND "GRACE 
ABOUNDING " 

An excuse may be offered for another word or 
two upon Bunyan. The properties of light are 
revealed by the object which reflects or absorbs 
it. We are struck with the peculiar dryness of 
the criticism on Shakespeare in the eighteenth cen- 
tury. It was dry, not because the eighteenth 
century was deficient In intellect, but because there 
was so much In Shakespeare to which it could not 
respond. It did not ask the questions we ask, or 
demand what we demand. It is peculiarly true 
of Bunyan that his great qualities are those of 
relationship which no one time or temperament 
can fully unfold. For more than two hundred 
years he has been mainly the beloved Interpreter 
of their religion to common folk, and they would 
have found It difficult to express any admiration 



a JOHN BUNYAN 

for him which was not partly at least theological. 
We also In the twentieth century are thankful that 
Puritanism found such an expositor and preacher 
as Bunyan. It Is an inestimable gain that a re- 
ligion should obtain presentation by genius such 
as his. We are now, however, beginning to see 
that he is not altogether the representative of 
Puritanism, but the historian of Mansoul, and that 
the qualification necessary in order to understand 
and properly value him Is not theological learn- 
ing, nor In fact any kind of learning or literary 
skill, but the experience of life, with Its hopes 
and fears, bright day and black night. 

John Bunyan was christened on November 30, 
1628, in Elstow church, and was probably born 
therefore on the 28th. It was a strange year. It 
was the year of the third Parliament of Charles 
the First, to which Oliver Cromwell, a young 
man, twenty-nine years old, had been returned as 
member for the town of Huntingdon, lying about 
twenty miles north-east of Bedford, and, like Bed- 
ford, on the Ouse. Three years before Bunyan's 



LIFE AND '' GRACE ABOUNDING " 3 

birth the House of Commons had been much dis- 
turbed by the Arminianism of Richard Montagu, 
Rector of Stanford Rivers, and had appointed a 
Committee to examine his books. The King sup- 
ported him, and in 1628 made him Bishop of 
Chichester. Probably he would not have escaped 
if Parliament had not been dissolved in March, 
1629; for, singular as it may now appear to us, 
the English squire in the first half of the seven- 
teenth century held that it was all important to a 
man whether he believed in Free Grace or Elec- 
tion. 1628 was the year of the Petition of Right 
when, after a message from the King forbidding 
the House to '' lay any scandal or aspersion upon 
the State, Government, or ministers thereof," it 
was so profoundly excited that sobs and tears 
burst out on every bench. Old Coke, of all men 
in the world, wept, and, after trying to speak, was 
obliged to sit down, unable through emotion to 
say a word. It was a time in every way incon- 
ceivable to us now, and it is farther off from us in 
reality than the age of Julius Caesar. 



4 JOHN BUNYAN 

The place of Bunyan's birth, although in El- 
stow parish, was almost certainly not in the vil- 
lage, but in a cottage close to Harrowden and the 
old coach road from Bedford to London. Elstow 
and the town of Bedford have greatly changed 
since 1628, and the change in Bedford has been 
more rapid during the last sixty years than at any 
previous period of its history. Sixty years ago 
there were many houses to be seen which must 
have been standing in Bunyan's day : the Ouse was 
still liable to great floods like those which swept 
away the town gaol on the bridge in 1671, and 
the borough contained only about 10,000 inhab- 
itants. The country around, however, cannot 
have changed. Bedfordshire towards the north- 
west is diversified and beautiful. The river all the 
way from Kempston to the borders of Bucking- 
hamshire, through Bromham, Oakley, Milton 
and Harrold wanders through lovely meadows, 
often turning, after a course of miles, almost back 
on itself in order to get through the low hills, but 
near Bedford and Elstow the land is flat, bare, 



LIFE AND ^' GRACE ABOUNDING'* 5 

and to most people uninteresting. Nevertheless 
It has its merits; a wide sky overhangs it, it 
is not intrusive, demanding admiration, and it is 
quiet. 

It is worth recording for the benefit of persons 
who attach importance to such things that the 
Bunyans, although always humble folk, were an 
old family, that they were in Bedfordshire in 
1 199, and that the name is probably of French 
origin. Of Bunyan's mother hardly anything is 
known, and the father was a brasier or tinker. 
The Grace Abounding tells us that he put his son 
to school and, according to Mr. Froude, it was the 
Bedford Grammar School. His authority is the 
lines in the Scriptural Poems — 

For I'm no poet, nor a poet's son, 
But a mechanick guided by no rule. 
But what I gained in a grammar school, 
In my minority. 

There Is external evidence that the Scriptural 
Poems are not Bunyan's, and the Internal evidence 



6 JOHN BUNYAN 

IS almost conclusive. Besides, If the boy went to 
the Bedford Grammar School he must have 
lodged In the town. Harrowden Is nearly two 
miles distant, and Elstow about a mile and a 
half — too far away for a little child In all weath- 
ers, winter and summer, through seventeenth- 
century mud. The Epistle to the Reader prefixed 
to the Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded 
says, " I never went to school, to Aristotle and 
Plato, but was brought up at my father's house, 
In a very mean condition, among a company of 
poor countrymen." Nor Is there anything In Bun- 
yan's writings which shows any trace of a gram- 
mar school. His English has been a puzzle to 
some, but It is easy to see whence It comes. If 
we take the first 300 words, not of one of his 
theological treatises, but of his Relation of the 
Imprisonment, excluding proper names, there are 
only five which are not In the Authorized Version, 
and these are " aforesaid," " warrant," " Bibles," 
*' constable," " coward " — all of them words in 
commonest use, and the first is biblical if we 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" 7 

divide it.^ The language of our translation of 
the Bible is, In fact, sufficient for nearly every- 
thing, excluding science, that a human being need 
know or can feel. 

It was probably in the year 1644 that Bunyan 
became a soldier. He does not say which side 
he took, and Mr. Froude supposes he was Royal- 
ist. But In 1896 the muster rolls of the Newport 
Pagnell garrison were found and the name of 
" John Bunion " appears on them from Novem- 
ber 30, 1644, to June 17, 1647.2 Part of the 
Newport garrison was present at the siege of 
Leicester by the King's army in the summer of 
1645, ^^^ Carlyle therefore is most likely right 
when he says, " John Bunyan, I believe, is this 
night (June 14, 1645) in Leicester — not yet writ- 
ing his Pilgrim^ s Progress on paper, but acting it 
on the face of the earth, with a brown matchlock 

^ He often quotes from the Genevan version. It was not at 
once superseded by the Authorized Version, for six editions of 
it v^ere published between i6i i and 1621. 

'^Brown's Life. Edition 1902, i. 44-5. 



8 JOHN BUNYAN 

on his shoulder, or rather without the matchlock, 
just at present; Leicester and he having been 
taken the other day." ^ When he was discharged 
he came to Elstow, where about 1649 he married 
his first wife. Of her we know little or nothing, 
excepting that she died in 1655 and was the 
mother of four of Bunyan's children. 

The Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners 
was not published till 1666, but as It contains a 
record of Bunyan's early life we pass on to It now. 
It was written In prison. It Is a terrible story of 
the mental struggle of a man of genius of a 
peculiarly nervous and almost hypochondriacal 
temperament; whose sufferings, although they 
are Intertwisted with Puritanism, have roots 
which lie deep In our common nature. Bunyan's 
object In writing It was not the pleasure of self- 
analysis, but to strengthen those of his friends 
who had suffered his temptations. " I have sent 
you here " — this Is his message In the Preface — 
" a drop of that honey that I have taken out 

^Carlyle*s Cromzuell, p. 215, edition 1845. 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING'* 9 

of the carcass of a lion. Temptations, when we 
meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon 
Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time 
we see them, we shall find a nest of honey within 
them. The Philistines understood me not. . . . 
I can remember my fears and doubts and sad 
months with comfort; they are as the head of 
Goliah in my hand." This noble image is an 
instance, not only of Bunyan's poetical gift, but 
of the way in which the Bible serves to add depth 
to his experiences and to give them utterance. 

The Grace Abounding is in Bunyan's best man- 
ner. " I could also," he says, " have stepped 
into a style much higher than this in which I 
have here discoursed, and could have adorned 
all things more than here I have seemed to do; 
but I dare not. God did not play in convincing 
of me; the Devil did not play in tempting of 
me; neither did I play when I sunk as into a bot- 
tomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold 
upon me: wherefore I may not play in my re- 
lating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay 



lo JOHN BUNYAN 

down the thing as It was." Up to the time 
of his marriage he was a ringleader " In all man- 
ner of vice and ungodliness," but unchastlty was 
not one of his sins. He was charged with It In 
, later life by his enemies, and he repelled the accu- 
sation with almost savage fierceness. " These 
things make them ripe for damnation that are 
the authors and abettors." He denies that there 
is any woman in heaven, or earth or hell, that 
can say I have " at any time, in any place, by day 
or night, so much as attempted to be naught with 
them." " . . . If all the fornicators and adul- 
terers In England were hanged by the neck till 
they be dead, John Bunyan, the object of their 
envy, would be still alive and well. I know not 
whether there be such a thing as a woman breath- 
ing under the copes of the whole Heaven, but by 
their apparel, their children, or by common fame, 
except my wife." This Is a remarkable fact, con- 
sidering his temperament. Neither was he a 
drunkard. The crimes he confesses are " cursing, 
swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING'^ ii 

of God." It is difficult to make out exactly what 
he was in his early years, for his religion after 
his conversion turned all wrong-doing of every 
degree into a transgression inexpiable, save by 
the tremendous sacrifice of the Son of God. 
Southey calls him a blackguard; but a blackguard 
who was not loose with women, who did not 
drink, and whose spirit trembled when he saw 
wicked things done " by those who professed 
goodness " could not have been the blackguard ^ 
of to-day. Bunyan must have been original even 
when he was unregenerate. As a child he was 
afflicted with fearful dreams " of devils and 
wicked spirits." " In the midst of my many 
sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain com- 
panions, I was often much cast down and afflicted 
in my mind therewith, yet I could not let go my 
sins." His proneness to strong language and ^ 
swearing Is a line in his portrait which Is signifi- 
cant. One day as he " was standing at a neigh- 
bour's shop window and there cursing and swear- 
ing and playing the madman," he was reproved 



11 JOHN BUNYAN 

by the woman of the house, " though she was a 
^ very loose and ungodly wretch/' and he suddenly 
left off this evil habit, and reports, " Now, I 
could, without it, speak better and with more 
pleasantness than ever I could before." 

After his marriage his outward conduct im- 
proved and he became what we now call " re- 
spectable." He went to church twice a day, he 
"adored, and that with great devotion, even all 
things (both the High place. Priest, Clerk, Vest- 
ment, Service and what else) belonging to the 
Church." Southey says, and is followed by 
Canon Venables, that the services in Elstow 
church were those prescribed by the General As- 
sembly in 1643, but Bunyan's description can only 
apply to Anglican ritual, and, as Dr. Brown 
points out, the vicar of Elstow, Christopher Hall, 
was appointed under Laud and remained vicar 
four years after the Restoration and two years 
after the Act of Uniformity. The probability 
is that the imposition of the General Assembly's 
Directory was not very strict. Bunyan declares 



LIFE AND ^' GRACE ABOUNDING" 13 

that at this time he was nothing but a '' poor 
painted hypocrite." If this be true the hypocrisy 
must have been thin and penetrable. A voice 
from heaven darted into his soul while he was 
playing cat, and warned him that above Elstow 
Green was heaven and beneath there was hell. 
He fancied bell-ringing to be vanity — ^perhaps his 
companions were not what they should have been 
— and yet, although he durst not ring, he hank- 
ered so that he could not resist looking on. He 
then was struck with dread that a bell might fall 
and kill him. When he moved outside he feared 
the steeple might come down on him, and he was 
at last so shaken that he was forced to flee. He 
left off dancing and " had great peace in his con- 
science. . . . God cannot choose but now be 
pleased with me," he said to himself; "yea, to 
relate it in mine own way, I thought no man in 
England could please God better than I. But 
poor wretch as I was, I was all this while igno- 
rant of Jesus Christ, and going about to establish 
my own righteousness; and had perished therein, 



14 JOHN BUNYAN 

had not God, in mercy, showed me more of my 
state by nature." God showed it to him in mercy 
by three or four poor women whom he heard 
talking as they sat in the sun about a New Birth, 
the work of God in their hearts. " They also 
discoursed of their own wretchedness of heart, of 
their unbelief; and did contemn, slight, and abhor 
their own righteousness as filthy and insufficient to 
do them any good." Bunyan was wrought into a 
" very great softness and tenderness of heart," 
and precisely at this dangerous moment, under 
the full influence of the new revelation that by 
faith we are justified, he came in contact with 
the Ranters. But although he was excitable and 
at times on the verge of madness, and although 
he was just passing from " under the Law," no 
tendency to Antinomianism developed itself in 
him. He was securely weighted with unshifting 
ballast, the ballast of common sense. The por- 
trait by White is that of an enthusiast, but of an 
enthusiast with something of the wisdom of Bacon 
and the strength of Cromwell. The Ranters con- 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" 15 

demned him as " legal and dark." He blesses 
God, '* who put it into my heart to cry to Him 
to be kept and directed, still distrusting mine own 
wisdom; for I have since seen even the effect of 
that prayer, in His preserving me, not only from 
Ranting errors, but from those also that have 
sprung up since." 

God had now touched his heart and he had 
embarked on his voyage, but he encountered 
fearful storms before he reached the Blessed 
Land. He says, " I was tossed betwixt the Devil 
and my own ignorance." His ignorance no doubt 
had something to do with the form which his 
temptations took. He did not understand, for 
example, the meaning of the word " faith," and 
doubted whether he possessed it. The Devil 
" came in with his delusion," seen to be a delu- 
sion in 1666, that faith was a power to work mir- 
acles, and on the road between Elstow and Bed- 
ford he was almost persuaded by the Infernal 
Enemy to command the puddles in the horsepads 
to be dry and the dry places to be puddles. But 



1 6 JOHN BUN Y AN 

although a skilled Biblical scholar treating him 
tenderly might have helped him much, his trouble 
did not really proceed from texts. If texts had 
caused It, the Grace Abounding would not now be 
alive, pulsating with blood, but dead as a Body 
of Divinity. 

He was " afflicted and disquieted," nay more, 
" was drawn to his wits' end " by Election and 
Predestination. It. may be said without much 
exaggeration that if a man has not at some time 
In his life been driven wellnigh to his wits' end 
by these mysteries or something like them, he 
lacks that which is necessary to make him a phi- 
losopher or perhaps religious. Bunyan does not 
tell us how he solved the problem. In the Doc- 
trine of the Law and Grace Unfolded, published 
In 1659, h^ IS disposed to turn away from It. He 
learned probably that here, 

all labour 
Mars what it does ; yea, very force entangles 
Itself with strength, 

and that we have to live without the solution. 



I 



LIFE AND ^' GRACE ABOUNDING" 17 

He was also tempted by Satan, by his own heart 
and carnal acquaintance to go back to his old 
way of life, but a vision had been revealed to him 
of that which was sufficient to prevent a relapse 
at least into worldliness. A " sound sense of 
death and of the Day of Judgment abode as it 
were continually in his view." Nevertheless, what 
he calls his " original and inward pollution " was 
such a '^ plague and affliction " to him that he 
was convinced " none but the Devil himself could 
equalize him for inward wickedness and pollu- 
tion of mind," and that his damnation was cer- 
tain. Few people would now carry the doctrine 
of original sin so far. There is not probably a 
Christian minister living who would not have ad- 
mitted Bunyan at this time to membership of the 
Church of Christ. 

His awful doubts and fears were not shared by 
others, not even by " the people of God." " They 
would pity me and would tell me of the Prom- 
ises." The " people of God " at Bedford be- 
lieved in their Calvinism, but they sat In their 



1 8 JOHN BUN Y AN 

shops and quietly went about their business un- 
troubled by their creed. 

Some of the attacks of the Devil were made 
with modern weapons. " Every one doth think 
his own religion rightest, both Jews and Moors 
and Pagans ! and how if all our faith, and Christ 
and Scriptures, should be but a Think-so too?" 
He had no arguments with which to encounter 
these suggestions, " only,'' he says, " by the dis- 
taste that they gave unto my spirit, I felt there 
was something In me which refused to embrace 
them." *' Of all the temptations that ever I met 
with In my life," he adds later on in the Conclu- 
sion, " to question the Being of God and the 
Truth of His Gospel Is the worst, and the worst 
to be borne. When this temptation comes It takes 
away my girdle from me and removeth the Foun- 
dation from under me." 

His account of the horrors which beset him 
reminds us of the fiends in Diirer's Knight, and 
even In its theological dialect it Is so close to ex- 
perience that it Is often Impossible to read It with- 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" 19 

out shuddering. Shocking blasphemies rose to his 
lips and he thought that if he uttered them he 
should be lost. " This temptation did put me 
to such scares, lest I should at some times, I say, 
consent thereto, and be overcome therewith, that 
by the very force of my mind, in labouring to 
gainsay and resist this wickedness, my very body 
also would be put into action or motion by way 
of pushing or thrusting with my hands or el- 
bows." At last the fatal words were spoken. The 
ingenuity of the great Accuser was infernal. The 
poor wretch was encouraged for the moment by 
the promise, " All manner of sins and blasphe- 
mies shall be forgiven unto the sons ofmen,where- 
withsoever they shall blaspheme," but the follow- 
ing verse excepted the sin against the Holy Ghost, 
and this was the sin which the Enemy told him 
he had committed. For two years, with intermit- 
tent relief, he lay prostrate under this conviction. 
The " masterless hell-hounds " were now and 
then quieted, but not by anything which we should 
call reasoning. Once they were " commanded a 



ao JOHN BUNYAN 

silence " by a word from God, " See that ye re- 
fuse not him that speaketh," " a chide to my 
proneness to desperation; a kind of threatening 
me if I did not, notwithstanding my sins and the 
heinousness of them, venture my salvation upon 
the Son of God." It was so distinctly heard, so 
unexpected, that Bunyan evidently thought it was 
a miracle. " But as to my determining about 
this strange dispensation, what it was I knew not : 
or from whence it came I know not; I have not 
yet in twenty years' time, been able to make a 
judgment of It; I thought then what here I shall 
be loth to speak. But verily, that sudden rush- 
ing wind was as if an Angel had come upon me; 
but both It and the salutation I will leave until the 
Day of Judgment; only this I say. It commanded 
a great calm In my soul." A calm only for a 
short season. The waves and the billows again 
went over him. He had what are called 
" friends," and sought their help. He broke his 
mind to an " ancient Christian." " I told him 
also that I was afraid that I had sinned the sin 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING'^ 21 

against the Holy Ghost; and he told me he 
thought so too. Here, therefore, I had but cold 
comfort; but, talking a little more with him, I 
found him, though a good man, a stranger to 
much combat with the Devil." 

The use which Bunyan made of detached and 
irrelevant Scriptures seems to us absurd. The 
tenth chapter of Daniel contains one of the proph- 
et's visions concerning the future of Israel — 
" Now I am come to make thee understand what 
shall befall thy people in the latter days, for yet 
the vision is for many days." Bunyan actually 
laid hold of these last three words as a " discour- 
agement," yet as a " help and refreshment " be- 
cause he had feared his condition might be eter- 
nal. So also the passage in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews about Esau, " For ye know, how that 
afterward, when he would have inherited the 
blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place 
of repentance, though he sought it carefully with 
tears," did " seize upon my soul " and " lie all 
day long, all the week long, yea, all the year long 



12 JOHN BUNYAN 

In my mind, and hold me down, so that I could 
by no means lift up myself." Sometimes the 
texts are more to the point. The symbolism of 
many of the stories in the Bible Is natural and 
not arbitrary or accidental. They are the vesture 
of Ideas. For example, Bunyan found " the great- 
est comfort " In the appointment of the Cities 
of Refuge — " And if the avenger of blood pur- 
sue after him (the slayer), then they (the elders) 
shall not deliver the slayer up into his hand, be- 
cause he smote his neighbour unwittingly, and 
hated him not beforetlme." The fact becomes 
a similitude, which is not external, but inward, for 
the Cities of Refuge were founded by that same 
Divine Mercy to which we look for pity and aid. 
" I hated Him (his Lord) not aforetime " — ^we 
can see the tears In his eyes — " no, I prayed unto 
Him, was tender of sinning against Him. . . . 
wherefore I thought I had a right to enter this 
City." 

For a short time longer the contest continued. 
Esau would not leave him entirely, but when he 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" 23 

was most sad and fearful the promise broke in 
upon him, " My grace is sufficient for thee," three 
times repeated, and it was " as though I had seen 
the Lord Jesus look down from Heaven through 
the tiles upon me, and direct these words unto 
me." Soon afterwards he could rejoice — '* Now 
did my chains fall off my legs indeed: I was 
loosed from my affliction and irons; my tempta- 
tions also fled away; so that from that time, those 
dreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble me; 
now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and 
love of God." He found his peace in the deepest 
mysticism of Saint Paul. " I saw that the Man 
Christ Jesus, as He Is distinct from us, as touch- 
ing His bodily presence, so He Is our Righteous- 
ness and Sanctlficatlon before God. Here, there- 
fore, I lived for some time, very sweetly at peace 
with God through Christ. Oh, methought, 
Christ ! Christ ! there was nothing but Christ that 
was before my eyes; I was not now only for 
looking upon this and the other benefits of Christ 
apart, as of His blood, burial or resurrection, 



V 



^4 JOHN BUNYAN 

V but considered Him as a whole Christ; as He 
In whom all these, and all other His virtues, rela- 
tions, offices and operations met together, and 
that, as He sat on the right hand of God In 
Heaven. . . . Had I had a thousand gallons 
of blood within my veins, I could freely then have 
spilt It all at the command and feet of this My 
Lord and Saviour." Atheism disappeared finally, 
not, as before noticed, by proofs, but because 
\ *' God and Christ were continually before my 
face." He was able, thrice-blessed acquisition! 
" often in his greatest agonies even to flounce 
towards the Promise (as the horses do towards 
sound ground that yet stick In the mire)," and 
often " could scarce lie in bed for joy and peace 
and triumph through Christ." ^ 

^ The date of relief is fixed by the Doctrine of the Law and 
Grace Unfolded. '* But at the last, as I may say, when the 
set time was come, the Lord, just before the men called Quakers 
came into the country, did set me down so blessedly in the 
truth of the doctrine of Jesus Christ." The Quakers came into 
Bedfordshire in 1654. Bunyan was received into the Bedford 
Church in 1653. 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" 25 

It is remarkable that the conflict, although not 
quite concluded, was not dangerous during the 
confinement of prison life, but after 1654 Bun- 
yan, even during his imprisonment, was so busy- 
that the Devil found no opportunity for another 
serious attack. 

The Creator gets the appointed task out of his v/ 
servants in many ways. It is sufficient to give 
some of them love, sunrises and sunsets and prim- 
rose woods in spring: others have to be scourged 
with bloody whips or driven nearly mad by 
dreams, sleeping and waking, before they do what 
God has determined for them. Unless Bunyan, 
like Job, had been so terrified with visions that 
his soul would have chosen '' strangling and 
death " rather than life, the Pilgrim^ s Progress 
would not have been written. His genius by des- 
perate effort and divine help was able to retain 
its supremacy, and yet it owed much to that which 
it strove to suppress. His sufferings have been 
attributed in part to what we call '* physical 
causes." " I was often, when I have been walk- 



i6 JOHN BUNYAN 

Ing, ready to sink where I went, with falntness in 
my mind. ... I felt also such a clogging and 
heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, 
that I was, especially at some times, as if my 
breast bone would have split asunder." The 
distinction between physical and spiritual does not 
help us much. Bunyan may have been troubled 
N with indigestion, but this malady does not always 
beget terror of sin and the struggles of Grace 
Abounding. We may say of men like Bunyan 
that it is not their strength taken by itself which 
makes them remarkable and precious, but rather 
the conflict of strength and weakness. When 
God adds He subtracts; when He subtracts He 
adds. He plunges them Into despair and then 
provides them with faith whereby they may get 
the better of It. He breaks them down and then 
lifts them up even so that they see the Lord Jesus 
looking " through the tiles " upon them. It Is 
strange, by the way, that Johnson resembled Bun- 
yan. His spectres haunted Johnson, and the His- 
tory of my Melancholy, which he once thought 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" 27 

of writing but never dared to write, would un- 
doubtedly have reminded us of another history 
by the author of the Pilgrim* s Progress which he 
loved so well. " You seem, sir," said Mrs. 
Adams to Johnson, " to forget the merits of our 
Redeemer." '' Madam," he replied, " I do not 
forget the merits of my Redeemer; but my Re- 
deemer has said that He will set some on His 
right hand and some on His left." " He was in 
gloomy agitation," adds Boswell, '' and said, * I'll 
have no more on't.' " 

In 1650 John Gifford was appointed minister 
at Bedford, and Bunyan became his friend. Gif- 
ford was originally an officer In the King's army. 
He was taken prisoner at the battle of Maid- 
stone in 1648, condemned to death, saved by his 
sister, who visited him In prison, and after lying 
In the bottom of a ditch for three days he came 
to London and then to Bedford, where he prac- 
tised physic, " but abode still very vile and de- 
bauched In life, being a great drinker, gamester, 
swearer." One night, having lost heavily, it put 



28 JOHN BUNYAN 

him Into a rage, and he thought many " desperate 
thoughts against God. But while he was looking 
Into one of Mr. Bolton's books something therein 
took hold upon him and brought him Into a great 
sense of sin, wherein he continued for the space of 
a month or above. But at last God did so plenti- 
fully discover to him by His word the forgiveness 
of his sins for the sake of Jesus Christ that (as 
he hath by several of the brethren been heard to 
say) all his life after, which was about the space 
of five years, he lost not the light of God's coun- 
tenance — no, not for an hour, save only about 
two days before he died." ^ " The godly " were 
at first " In a stand at the case," but In 1650 he 
was unanimously chosen pastor or elder " to dis- 
pense the mysteries of the gospel." In less than 
two years after " the very vile and debauched " 
stage he was a changed man, and never took to 
his vicious habits again. Fear of hell-fire Is our 
lazy, stupid comment. It does not occur to us 

1 Church Record. Brown's Life of John Bunyan, p. 83, 
edition 1885. 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING'' 29 

that there is any need to explain why at a cer- 
tain moment the drinking, swearing, gaming, ex- 
major should see the flames he had never seen 
before. It would be interesting to learn what his 
ungodly companions in Bedford had to say about 
it! We would give much to have watched ex- 
Major Gifford taking his afternoon walk up the 
High Street, and to have heard what passed when 
they met him. 

" Gifford did much," says Bunyan, " for my 
stability. ..." He would bid us take special 
heed that we took not up any truth upon trust, 
as from this or that, or any other man or men, 
but to cry mightily to God that He would con- 
vince us of the reality thereof, and set us down 
therein, by His own Spirit in the Holy Word." 
About 1655 Bunyan removed from Elstow to 
Bedford, and in the same year his wife died. 
Gifford also died in 1655, and was succeeded by 
John Burton. About 1655 Bunyan began to 
preach in the villages round Bedford, the church, 
after fasting and solemn prayer to the Lord, hav- 



30 JOHN BUNYAN 

ing called him to the work. From the first he 
^ drew crowds of people to listen to him. The 
Tempter did not entirely leave him, although he 
had become a public servant of God. He was 
now and then violently assaulted by hellish sug- 
gestions, and could hardly close his teeth and lips 
against them even in the pulpit. Grace abounds 
ing supported him. " I went," as he says in A 
Brief Account of the Author's Call to the Work 
of the Ministry, " myself in chains to preach to 
them in chains; and carried that fire in my own 
conscience that I persuaded them to beware of." 
In 1656, when he was twenty-nine years old, 
Bunyan published his first book, Some Gospel 
Truths Opened. The Quakers had appeared at 
Bedford, and he thought their teaching danger- 
ous. They substituted, so he affirms, the author- 
ity of an inner light for that of the Scriptures. 
One of George Fox's friends, Edward Burrough, 
who died in the pestilential felon's dungeon in 
Newgate in 1662, replied in The True Faith of 
the Gospel of Peace. This was followed by Bun- 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING" 31 

yan's Vindication, and this again by Burrough's 
Truth the Strongest of All. The violence on both 
sides is distressing. Bunyan's methods are repul- 
sive. Texts are hurled like stones; the context is 
disregarded, and any meaning which for the mo- 
ment may be convenient is given to metaphor. 
The Quakers are the greatest enemies to the 
Christ of any men under heaven, " the notablest 
liars and corrupters of the sayings of the people 
of God, yea, and of the Scriptures also, that ever 
I came near in all the days of my life,'* and they 
will be cut asunder; their portion will be with the 
hypocrites, where shall be weeping and gnashing 
of teeth. The misunderstanding of the Quaker 
doctrine looks as if it must be wilful. They are 
classed with the mad, obscene Ranters, whom 
George Fox denounced most fervently.^ " They 
1 Offor quotes an Act of Parliament passed against them in 
1650. It sentenced to imprisonment and transportation those 
who asserted they were God, or that crimes like murder and 
incest were lawful. Bunyan had real cause for alarm, but he 
ought not to have used the sins of the Ranters as a weapon 
against the Friends. 



32 JOHN BUNYAN 

had," he says In his Journal, " disturbed our meet- 
ings much." One of them at Southampton Mar- 
ket Cross publicly boasted of a lewd act he had 
committed, whereupon Fox warned them that the 
plagues and judgments of God would overtake 
them, and he records with something like satisfac- 
tion that this particular offender hanged himself. 
Burrough also had prophesied against them as 
early as 1655. Burrough's abuse of Bunyan was 
more scurrilous than Bunyan's of Burrough. He 
had joined the army of Magog; his king was the 
Prince of Darkness, he was of the seed of Cain, 
whose line reached to the murdering priests. 
There were few real points of difference between 
these good men, and they ought to have seen that 
for the most part their quarrel was a mere mis- 
understanding. Burrough, in his Standard Lifted 
Up, says, " The Word of God, which was in the 
beginning, and which endures for ever, is not the 
Scripture, which was not In the beginning, neither 
can It endure for ever, but the Scripture testifies 
of that Word, and that Word witnesses to the 



\ 




LIFE AND " GRACE ABOUNDING " ^3 

Scripture." His explanation of the Fall in his 
Discovery of Divine Mysteries is that man 
fell because he " desired to be, and became to be ^ 
something of himself without God; and he spoke 
of himself, and acted of himself, without the 
Power and Life, and also contrary to the Power 
and Life of the Creator, being separated from it 
and become a distinct being of himself." If the 
two angry controversialists could have met and 
talked quietly to one another, Bunyan would have 
agreed with Burrough, and he with Bunyan. 
Controversy, particularly in religious matters, al- 
ways brings out the bad side of those who engage 
in it, especially bitterness, which is all the worse 
because it is insincere. It is not love of the truth 
which stirs our wrath. 

In 1658, under the Commonwealth, Bunyan 
was indicted for preaching, although the prosecu- 
tion does not seem to have been taken in hand 
very seriously. He was not an approved preacher 
under an Act of 1648 directed against Baptists 
and also against those heretics who assert " that 



34 JOHN BUNYAN 

man Is bound to believe no more than by his rea- 
son he can comprehend." ^ In 1659 he was mar- 
ried to his second wife, Elizabeth, of whom little 
Is known except that she was pious and brave, as 
we shall see presently. 

In May 1660 came the Restoration, and In 
the same year the Bedford congregation were 
turned out of Saint John's Church. To the living 
of this Church GIfford had been presented by the 
patrons, the Mayor and Corporation of the town, 
under Cromwell's Ordinance admitting to bene- 
fices men who had the root of the matter In them, 
although they might not be Episcopalian. In 
November 1660 Bunyan went to conduct a serv- 
ice at Lower Samsell, a small village not far from 
the Harllngton station on the present Midland 
main line, where the level land of Bedford has 
risen considerably towards the chalk hills. A 
justice of the peace, Mr. Francis Wlngate,^ hav- 

1 Off or'' s Memoir, etc., i. XLI. 

2 One of the oldest families in Bedfordshire. William Wyn- 
gate, of Sharpenhoe, was in the retinue of Henry V. when he 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING" 35 

ing heard that the meeting was to be held, issued 
a warrant to arrest the preacher. He was taken 
before Wingate and the Vicar of Harlington, Dr. 
Tindall. The statutes which authorized the war- 
rant were passed in Ehzabeth's reign, and the last 
imposed the penalty of imprisonment on those 
who frequented conventicles. After some wran- 
gling the mittimus was made out, and Bunyan was 
sent to the county gaol at Bedford, there to await 
his trial at quarter sessions. In about seven or 
eight weeks he was indicted. His judges, fol- 
lowing the example of their brethren who com- 
mitted him, did not state the law, but fell to argu- 
ment on extempore prayer and unauthorized 
preaching. Bunyan replied and quoted the text, 
" As every man hath received the gift, even so 
minister the same one to another." Justice Keel- 
ing desired to " open that Scripture," and inter- 
preted it to mean that as every one hath received 
a trade, so let him follow it, adding, " if any 

first went to Fraiijce. — Sir Harris Nicolas' History of the Battle 
of Agincourt, p. 386. 



S6 JOHN BUNYAN 

man have received a gift of tinkering, as thou 
hast done, let him follow his tinkering." The 
sentence was imprisonment for three months; If 
at the end of that time he did not go to church 
and leave off preaching, he was to be banished 
the realm, and if found within the realm after 
the day appointed him to be gone, he would be 
hung. 

The three months expired on April 3, 1661, 
and Bunyan was not released, but was visited by 
Mr. Cobb, Clerk of the Peace, who was evidently 
a kind-hearted man, anxious to save his neighbour 
from further punishment. He came by order of 
the justices to discover if Bunyan would submit. 
In January of that year there had been an Insur- 
rection in London of the Fifth-monarchy men 
under Venner, the same Venner who had plotted 
against Cromwell. Their object was to destroy 
all " carnal sovereignty " and set up a kingdom 
of Christ. There was a sharp engagement be- 
tween them and the Royal troops In the City and 
Venner was taken, hanged and quartered. The 






LIFE AND '' GRACE ABOUNDING " 37 

magistrates, fearing the consequences of Bunyan's 
release, may have been unwilling for his own sake 
to set him at liberty unconditionally. The Gov- 
ernment most likely would not draw fine distinc- 
tions, and would consider all disobedient sectaries 
as dangerous. Cobb referred to the statute of 
Elizabeth and put the plain question, which Bun- 
yan found it difficult to answer, by what right he 
claimed exemption from the law of the land in 
which he lived. His reply was that it was not 
aimed at persons like himself, who did not design 
the overthrow of the State, but merely to teach 
the religious doctrines which they believed to be 
true. Cobb's retort, legally unassailable, was 
that the Act of Parliament was clear, and that 
if it was permitted to go behind its express terms, 
every kind of pretext for disloyalty must be al- 
lowed. "Every one will say the same: you see 
the late insurrections at London, under what glo- 
rious pretences they went; and yet. Indeed, they 
Intended no less than the ruin of the kingdom 
and the commonwealth." Bunyan tried to argue 



38 JOHN BUNYAN 

his case on Its merits. '' If I may do good to one by 
my discourse, why may I not do good to two ? and 
if to two, why not to four, and so to eight? etc." 
This logic was not quite worthy of him, and the 
lawyer promptly crushed it. " Ay, and to a hun- 
dred, I warrant you." At last Bunyan put his 
feet upon the rock. " Where I cannot obey ac- 
tively, there I am willing to lie down, and to suf- 
fer what they shall do unto me." At this Mr. 
Cobb " sat still," and after Bunyan had thanked 
him " for his civil and meek discoursing " they 
parted. " O that we might meet in heaven! " are 
the characteristic concluding words of Bunyan's 
account of the Interview. Cobb " sat still," a 
wise Cobb. " You are bound," says society, " to 
conform to our rules. Men cannot live In civil- 
ized communities If individual rights and opin- 
ions are not to be sacrificed to those of the ma- 
jority." " I cannot dispute the point with you," 
replies the heretic. " You must hang me or shoot 
me." Society Is right, and the heretic Is right, 
and further debate Is mere logomachy. 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" 39 

Bunyan remained In prison quite illegally, but 
mercifully both for himself and for posterity. If 
he had been set free, he might have been trans- 
ported or hung or have spent himself in preach- 
ing, and we should have had no Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress, At the assizes in August 1661 his wife 
Elizabeth petitioned the Judges on his behalf, but 
in vain. She had been to London and had seen 
a lord whom she calls " Barkwood," and was 
told that the House of Lords could do nothing 
for her, and that her husband's release was com- 
mitted to the Judges. Hale, at that time Lord 
Chief Baron of the Exchequer, treated her very 
tenderly, but was obliged to inform her that she 
must either apply to the King for pardon or sue 
out a writ of error. Judge Twisdon and the mag- 
istrates present were abusive. Between these as- 
sizes and those which followed six months after- 
wards in the spring of 1662 Bunyan was allowed 
much liberty. He was permitted to preach, and ^ 
even to go to London, but when his enemies heard 
of it they were so angry that the keeper of the 



40 JOHN BUNYAN 

gaol wellnigh lost his place. In 1666 Bunyan 
was released for a few weeks, but again arrested 
and imprisoned till 1672. Concerning the hard- 
ships he endured there has been much controversy. 
Dr. Brown is most likely right when he says that 
they varied with the gaolers. For seven years at 
the beginning of his confinement his name is not 
found in the records of the church, but afterwards 
It appears occasionally. The bare fact that he 
was shut up in a seventeenth century prison in 
which a hundred years later, when it could not 
have been worse, gaol fever broke out, killing 
many of the Inmates as well as the doctor and 
people outside, Is surely sufficient to convince us 
that he must have endured much misery. He 
occupied his time in making long tagged laces for 
the support of his family and In writing. Dur- 
ing his Imprisonment the Act of Uniformity, the 
Conventicle Act, and the Five Mile Act were 
passed. Under clauses In the Act of Uniformity, 
which were re-enacted by reference from older 
Acts, forfeiture of goods and chattels and Im- 



LIFE AND " GRACE ABOUNDING '' 41 

prisonment for life were decreed as punishment 
for the third offence " of declaring or speaking 
anything in the derogation, depraving or despis- 
ing of the Book of Common Prayer, or of any- 
thing therein contained, or any part thereof," and 
attendance at the parish church became compul- 
sory. The Conventicle Act provided that, wher- 
ever five persons above those of the same house- 
hold should assemble in a religious congregation, 
every one of them should be liable for the first of- 
fence to be imprisoned three months, or pay five 
pounds, for the second to be imprisoned six 
months or pay ten pounds, and for the third to 
pay a hundred pounds or be transported for 
seven years. The Five Mile Act prohibited a 
dissenting teacher, who had not subscribed the 
declaration required by the Act of Uniformity 
promising unqualified passive obedience to the 
King and conformity to the Church of England, 
from coming, except in travelling, within five 
miles of any corporate town sending members to 
Parliament, or of any place where he had for- 



42 JOHN BUNYAN 

merly preached. The penalty was a fine of forty 
pounds and six months imprisonment. In 1670 
the disgraceful treaty of Dover was signed be- 
tween Charles and Lewis, and Charles bound 
himself at a convenient time to make a public 
profession of the Roman Catholic religion. This 
was followed in March 1672 by the Declaration 
of Indulgence, suspending all penal laws against 
Dissenting Nonconformists and Roman Catholics, 
and granting them freedom of worship. In Janu- 
ary 1672, before the issue of the Declaration, 
Bunyan was appointed to the " eldership '^ or pas- 
torate of the Bedford church, and had therefore 
been released. In May 1672 a license as a meet- 
ing-house was obtained for a barn In Mill Lane 
occupying the site of the present chapel. 

In February 1673 Parliament met after an in- 
termission of two years, and proved to be fiercely 
Anglican. The King was forced to rescind the 
Declaration, and the penal acts again became 
operative. How Bunyan escaped apprehension 
for three years is uncertain. The church held its 



LIFE AND '' GRACE ABOUNDING " 43 

meetings, but whether in the barn or in the fields 
or in private houses we cannot tell. In March 
1676 Bunyan was arrested. It has always been 
supposed, on the authority of the Continuation to 
the Grace Abounding, and also of Charles Doe, 
that he suffered another imprisonment for six 
months, but we know nothing more. In 1887, 
however, the original warrant for the arrest was 
discovered, dated March 4, 1675 [o.s.] It is 
addressed to the constables of Bedford and signed 
by thirteen magistrates,^ setting forth that, not- 
withstanding the King's " clemency and indulgent 
grace and favour . . . yet one John Bunyan, of 
your said town, Tinker, hath divers times within 
one month last past, in contempt of his Majesty's 
good laws preached or teached at a Conventicle 

^ This warrant was originally in the Chauncy collection. It 
was bought by Mr. W. G. Thorpe, in 1887, and in that year 
he read an exhaustive paper on it before the Society of Anti- 
quaries. (Second series o^ Proceedings, Vol. xii. pp. 10-17). 
It was sold for ;^305 to Mr. Quaritch by Messrs. Sotheby, * 
Wilkinson and Hodge, at their sale on April 23, 1904. 



44 JOHN BUNYAN 

meeting or assembly, under colour or pretence of 
exercise of religion In other manner than accord- 
ing to the liturgy or practice of the Church of 
England. These are therefore In his Majesty's 
name to command you forthwith to apprehend 
and bring the body of the said John Bunyan 
before us or any of us or other his Majesty's 
Justices of Peace within the said county to answer 
the premisses.'' 

No trace is discoverable of any examination be- 
fore the magistrates, and we are not Informed 
whether the offence for which Bunyan was pun- 
ished was committed within the borough or out- 
side It. We therefore have no decisive evidence 
whether he was confined in the town prison on 
the bridge or In his old quarters In the county 
gaol In Silver Street. Tradition is all In favour 
of an Imprisonment at some time on the bridge; 
and as he could not have been there in 1 661-1672 
he was probably there In 1676. The point Is 
Interesting because It Is almost certain that the 
Pilgrim's Progress was written, as we shall see 



LIFE AND " GRACE ABOUNDING " 45 

presently, during this six months' seclusion. What 
the town gaol was like inside we cannot say, al- 
though the outside Is familiar from old prints. 
If the barred window was not too high, Bunyan 
must have had a pleasant view of the Ouse creep- 
ing slowly eastward to the Fens and the German 
Ocean. The company may have been an Inter- 
ruption at times to a man who saw visions and 
wanted to put them on paper; but the borough 
of Bedford was not large, and he was often no 
doubt In welcome solitude. 

) If the six months given as the period of Bun- 
yan's imprisonment Is strictly correct, he must 
have been set free In the autumn of 1676. The 
entries In the Church Book show that he was at 
liberty in the early part of 1677. An anonymous 
biographer, writing In 1700, and Asty, in his 
hife of Owen, both state that Barlow, Bishop of 
Lincoln, released Bunyan In 1672. Asty adds 
that John Owen moved Barlow to this act of 
mercy, Owen and Barlow having been friends at 
Oxford. The story on the face of it is Inaccu- 



46 JOHN BUNYAN 

rate. Barlow did not become bishop till 1675, 
and it was only as bishop that he could have had 
any authority in the matter. Then again, Asty 
tells us that the date of Barlow's interference 
was soon after the discovery of the Popish plot, 
that is to say after 1678, and lastly and more 
absurdly that Bunyan, in order to obtain his free- 
dom, gave a cautionary bond that he would con- 
form for six months. Possibly Owen and Barlow 
may have had something to do with Bunyan's 
liberation in 1676, and possibly also, as Canon 
Venables suggests, both the anonymous biogra- 
pher and Asty may have confused Bunyan with 
one of his friends. 

We know what Bunyan wrote between 1676 
and 1688, but of his life in Bedford during those 
years little is discoverable. We would not un- 
willingly give one or two of his sermons on Justi- 
fication by Faith for a diary from him of that 
eventful time. In 168 1, after the dissolution of 
the Oxford Parliament, came the reaction in 
favour of the King, renewed enforcement of the 



LIFE AND " GRACE ABOUNDING " 47 

laws against Dissenters, and the attack on the 
Corporation Charters. In 1683 Lord William 
Russell, Bunyan's neighbour, was executed, but 
not a word concerning him do we hear from 
Bunyan, although Bedford for months must have 
talked about him. But the darkest year was 
1685. Macaulay's account of the persecution 
which then raged is not exaggerated: "Never, 
not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the 
condition of the Puritans been so deplorable as 
at that time. ... It was impossible for the sec- 
taries to pray together without precautions such 
as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen 
goods. The places of meetings were frequently 
changed. Worship was performed sometimes 
just before break of day and sometimes at dead 
of night. Round the building where the little 
flock was gathered together sentinels were posted 
to give the alarm if a stranger drew near. The 
minister in disguise was introduced through the 
garden and the back yard. In some houses there 
were trap-doors through which In case of dan- 



48 JOHN BUNYAN 

ger he might descend. Where Nonconformists 
lived next door to each other, the walls were often 
broken open, and secret passages were made from 
dwelling to dwelling. No psalm was sung; and 
many contrivances were used to prevent the voice 
of the preacher, in his moments of fervour, from 
being heard beyond the walls. Yet with all this 
care it was often found Impossible to elude the 
vigilance of Informers. In the suburbs of Lon- 
don especially, the law was enforced with the 
utmost rigour. Several opulent gentlemen were 
accused of holding conventicles. Their houses 
were strictly searched, and distresses were levied 
to the amount of many thousands of pounds." ^ 
In January 1685 the Bedfordshire magistrates 
resolved " that all such laws as had been provided 
for the reducing all Dissenters to a thorough con- 
formity shall be forthwith put Into a speedy and 
vigorous execution. We do therefore, with the 
concurrence of the Right Reverend Father In 
God, our most worthy, learned and godly Lord 
^History of England, i. 667, edn. 1849. 



b,. ^* i'-ff-f'" ■^'A^''^^ "-^ ^ I 



""J '^'^- 






^/ ^ <^ f^S t»«/» 



.// /,.,,/Ay/^^"- ^ '^ 



f^ / 



/^^/ 






^ 



- / -^ 



. // ^ < ^^ , -/ //-^- 






*^^ <'■>-' '-''J 



"li^ an'ant ui-j^rt- n'tn*H ]l^itrtiti«t n^n/i nppt'fH<^nt>et> and 
i»ttp^-ipi>1^^'^ tt>i- the v-tx' i«imltu» . &\t»"tnoi tr^irH ftr tt^r^if 

The Warrant for Bunyan's Arrest in 1675. 



LIFE AND '' GRACE ABOUNDING " 49 

Bishop, desire all ministers, and require as well 
all constables and churchwardens truly and punct- 
ually to present both at our Quarter Sessions 
and Monthly Meetings all such in their respective 
parishes as shall absent themselves from their own 
parish church, also those who do not come at the 
beginning of Divine Service, kneeling at all pray- 
ers, and standing up at the Glory, at the Creed 
and Hymns. By which means we hope in time 
the true worship of God will be thoroughly 
understood and honestly practised by the people 
of this country, to God's glory and our own peace 
and comfort." ^ Presentation by the constable at 
Quarter Sessions does no doubt help many people 
to understand much which it is desirable they 
should understand, both for their own sakes and 
the peace and comfort of their neighbours, but 
It does not contribute to an understanding of the 
true worship of God. The bishop was Bishop 
Barlow, and he not only concurred with the reso- 
lution but backed It up with the following com- 

^ Brown, John Bunyan, p. 335, edn. 1885. 



50 JOHN BUNYAN 

mand to his clergy: ^' The rejection of this and 
the disobedience to the laws enjoining it render 
our Dissenters evidently schismatical in their sep- 
aration from the communion of our Church, but 
seeing that our Dissenting brethren will not con- 
form out of conscience to their duty and obedience 
to God and their governors, it is not only con- 
venient but necessary that our good laws be put in 
execution for the preservation of the public peace 
and unity and for the good of Dissenters them- 
selves, for Afflictio dat Intellectum, and their suf- 
ferings by the execution of our just laws may (by 
God's blessing) bring them to a sense of duty and 
a desire to do it. For the attaining of which 
good ends I require all the clergy of my diocese 
within the county of Bedford to publish this order 
the next Sunday after it be tendered to them and 
diligently to promote the design of it." ^ Afflictio 
dat intellectum is the Bishop's version of the mag- 
isterial doctrine concerning presentation by the 
constable. We shall meet with the Bishop again 

1 Brown, John Bunyan, p. 335, edn. 1885. 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING^' 51 

presently, and it is important to bear his episcopal 
direction in mind. Hardly any meetings of the 
Bedford church were held between August 1684 
and December 1686. Baxter had been sent to 
prison in the early part of 1685 after a trial be- 
fore Jeffreys, who swore that it would be no more 
than justice to whip such a villain through the 
city. In December 1685 Bunyan conveyed all 
his goods to his wife by deed of gift. The reason 
for so doing is obvious. He might at any mo- 
ment be fined or again lose his liberty. 

It is interesting to see how Bunyan thought the 
persecution ought to be met. He followed the 
gospel exactly. His friends were to beware of 
men, and if they were persecuted in one city they 
were to flee into another. He published in 1684 
a tract called Seasonable Counsel or Advice to 
Suferers. It may originally have been a sermon, 
for it had a text from Saint Peter — " Wherefore 
let them that suffer according to the will of God 
commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well- 
doing, as unto a faithful Creator." He speaks 



52 JOHN BUNYAN 

his own heart when he tells his hearers and reader 
not to be afraid of their own fear. " Timor- 
ousness shall not overcome thee . . . He can 
turn thee into another man, and make thee that 
which thou never wast. Timorous Peter, fearful 
Peter, he could make as bold as a lion. He that 
at one time was afraid of a sorry girl, he could 
make at another to stand boldly before the coun- 
cil. There is nothing too hard for God. He can 
say to them that are of a fearful heart, ' Be 
strong, fear not.' He can say, ' Let the weak say, 
I am strong ' ; hy such a word, by which He ere- 
ated^the world." This seems to be a recollection 
of the passage in Isaiah: " Hast thou not known? 
hast.thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the 
Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, falnt- 
eth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of 
His understanding. He giveth power to the 
faint." He, even He! There must be no " talk- 
ing against governors." Bunyan disclaimed " dis- 
affection to the government." He spoke " to 
show his loyalty to the King." He warned his 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING'' S3 

flock against foolhardlness. " Suffering for a 
truth ought to be cautiously took in hand and 
warily performed." If a minister is not allowed 
to preach here, let him go there. He can "quickly 
pack up and carry his religion with him." Bun- 
yan was no coward, but, as we have before no- 
ticed, he had sense, and he knew that under per- 
secution sense was as much needed as courage. 
He did not deny that attack was sometimes justi- 
fiable. It was so when Goliah defied the army of 
the living God. " Necessity gave David a call. 
Is there not a cause, saith he, lies bleeding upon 
the ground, and no man of heart or spirit to put 
a check to the bold blasphemer? I will go fight 
with him; I will put my life in my hand; if I 
die, I die." His humble Bedford friends must, 
however, remember that they were not all Davids, 
and that they had worse foes than magistrates and 
constables. " People that are afraid of fire are 
concerned most with that that burneth in their 
own chimney." Bunyan understood well enough 
how much more difficult it Is to fall out with sin 



54 JOHN BUNYAN 

at home than to join a committee for suppressing 
it in the streets. " To rail sin down, to cry it 
down, to pray kings and parliaments and men 
In authority to put it down, this is easier than to 
use my endeavour to overcome it with good. And 
sin must be overcome with good at home, before 
thy good can get forth of doors to overcome evil 
abroad." These truths are not new, but saving 
truths are mostly commonplace. There has been 
enough truth in the world for centuries past to 
redeem every soul in it. 

In Antichrist and his Ruin we are taught the 
same lesson. This tract was not published until 
after Bunyan's death, and the date of its composi- 
tion is uncertain, although It may probably be 
assigned to the close of the reign of Charles II. 
Bunyan alludes to the sufferings of the French 
Protestants, and seems to refer to the Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes; but, on the other hand, 
he looks to kings for the destruction of Antichrist. 
He would hardly have predicted after the acces- 
sion of James II that *' she shall not down but 



ill 



LIFE AND "GRACE ABOUNDING" SS 

by the hand of kings.'' He professes his loyalty 
to the King. Christians should " take heed of 
laying their trouble at the door of kings," but 
rather " labour to see the true cause of trouble, 
which is sin, and to attain to a fitness to be deliv- 
ered out thence, and that Is by repentance, and 
amendment of life . . . besides we must mind 
our duty." Bunyan was not revolutionary, nor 
even an active Whig, although he would have 
rejoiced In the freedom granted under William 
III. He was not a political person, and did not 
believe that it was the duty of everybody to be 
political. He knew his own limits. He knew 
what was his proper office and that God had sent 
him into the world not to engage in armed rebel- 
lions, but to preach the gospel. As to Antichrist 
it will tumble down when all the good Is departed 
out of her. It " was sometimes a place of resi- 
dence for good men . . . when you shall see the 
church and people of God so forsake her that 
she Is left in a manner to herself, and to her dis- 
ciples, then she is to fall quickly." A profound 



S6 JOHN BUNYAN 

truth to be borne In mind by propagandists. An- 
tichrist will not disappear until she is emptied of 
reality, and the substance, the fact, by which she 
exists has been taken up by her enemies. 

In 1686 there were signs that the tide was be- 
ginning to turn. James had conceived a plan for 
destroying the Anglican Church by uniting the 
Roman Catholics and Dissenters against it. In 
April 1687 appeared another Declaration, and 
all penal laws against Dissenters were sus- 
pended. They were not to be deluded. Baxter 
was set at liberty, but refused to join in any ad- 
dress of thanks for the Indulgence. Howe was 
allowed to return from Holland whither he had 
been exiled, but he denied the legality of the dis- 
pensing power. In March 1688 the Bedford Cor- 
poration was remodelled, and Dissenters, some of 
whom belonged to Bunyan's congregation, were 
admitted in expectation that they would use their 
power to return to Parliament members favour- 
able to the Court. The author of the Continua- 
tion to the Grace Abounding Informs us that 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING'^ 57 

'' during these things there were regulators sent 
into all cities and towns corporate, to new-model 
the government in the magistracy, etc., by turning 
out some and putting in others. Against this Mr. 
Bunyan expressed his zeal with some weariness, as 
foreseeing the bad consequence that would attend 
it, and laboured with his congregation to prevent 
their being imposed on in this kind; and when a 
great man in those days, coming to Bedford upon 
some such errand, sent for him, as it is supposed, 
to give him a place of public trust, he would by 
no means come at him, but sent his excuse." In 
April 1688 appeared the second Declaration, 
which was followed in May by the famous Order 
in Council directing that it should be read on two 
successive Sundays at the time of Divine Service 
by the officiating ministers of all the churches and 
chapels in the kingdom. Our friend Barlow, who 
in 1685 was of opinion that affiictio dat intellec- 
turn, at any rate to Nonconformists, did not find 
that trouble improved the clearness of his own 
Intellect. One of his clergy was doubtful whether 



58 JOHN BUNYAN 

he ought to obey the proclamation, and, seeking 
for guidance from the Bishop, received a reply 
which is worth reprinting as a model of ecclesiasti- 
cal instruction in difficulty. 

" Sir, I received yours, and all that I have time 
to say (the messenger which brought it making 
so little stay here) is only this: by his Majesty's 
command I was required to send that Declaration 
to all churches in my diocese, in obedience 
whereto I sent them. Now, the same authority 
which requires me to send them requires you to 
read them. But whether you should or should 
not read them, is a question of that difficulty, in 
the circumstances we now are, that you can't ex- 
pect that I should so hastily answer it, especially 
in writing. The two last Sundays, the clergy in 
London were to read it, but, as I am informed, they 
generally refused. For myself I shall neither per- 
suade nor dissuade you, but leave it to your pru- 
dence and conscience whether you will or will not 
read it; only this I shall advise, that if, after seri- 
ous consideration, you find that you cannot read 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING'' 59 

It, but reluctante vel duhitante conscientia, m that 
case to read it will be your sin, and you to blame 
for doing it. I shall only add that God Almighty 
would be so graciously pleased to bless and direct 
you so, that you may do nothing in this case, 
which may be justly displeasing to God, or the 
King (italics the present transcriber's), is the 
prayer of your loving friend and brother, Thos. 
Lincoln. 

"Buckden, May 29, 1688." ^ 

On the accession of James II, Barlow had got 
up an address which he caused to be signed by 
six hundred of his clergy, thanking the King for 
the first Declaration. Before the second appeared 
the Bishop had discerned a coming change of 
wind. Finally, when James had fled, he voted 
the abdication and took the oaths to William and 
Mary. It is not a surprise to learn that he 
reached the age of eighty-five and died peaceably 
in his palace. 

At the acquittal of the bishops, Bedford was 
^ Stoughton's Church of the Restoration, ii. 148-9. 



6o JOHN BUNYAN 

one of the towns which distinguished itself by its 
joy. Bunyan must have rejoiced also, but the con- 
cluding victory he was not to see. In August 
1688 he set out for London from Bedford, but 
went round by Reading. The author of the Con- 
tinuation before quoted says that the object of 
the journey to Reading was to soften the anger 
of a father towards his son whom he purposed 
to disinherit and that Bunyan's intercession was 
successful. His life, we learn on the same au- 
thority, was much spent " In reconciling differ- 
ences, by which he hindered many mischiefs, and 
saved some families from ruin; and in such fall- 
ings-out he was uneasy till he found means to 
labour a reconciliation." On his way from Read- 
ing to London he was overtaken by heavy rain 
and was wet through when he reached the house 
of the friend, John Strudwick on Snow Hill, with 
whom he was to stay. There he fell into a fever, 
and died on August 31, 1688. He was not sixty, 
but we are told that he was worn out with suffer- 
ings, age and often teaching. He was buried in 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING" 6i 

Bunhill Fields In a vault belonging to Strudwick. 
His property was sworn under £ioo. His books 
had been popular during his lifetime, and either 
therefore he did not himself make much money 
out of them or he gave It away. The house In 
which he lived In Saint Cuthbert's Street, Bed- 
ford, during his latter years existed within the 
memory of people now living. It was nothing 
better than a labourer's cottage, and In 1774 It 
was let for £2 yearly. He had six children, who 
grew up, four by the first wife and two by the 
second; and In addition there was a child which 
died at the birth when Its mother, Elizabeth Bun- 
yan, was '* smayed at the news " of her husband's 
apprehension. The " Brief Character of Mr. 
John Bunyan " In the Continuation Is as follows : 
" He appeared In countenance to be a stern and 
rough temper; but In his conversation mild and 
affable, not given to loquacity or much discourse 
in company, unless some urgent occasion required 
It: observing never to boast of himself, or his 
parts, but rather seem low in his own eyes, and 



62 JOHN BUNYAN 

submit himself to the judgment of others; abhor- 
ring lying and swearing, being just in all that lay 
in his power to his word, not seeming to revenge 
injuries, loving to reconcile differences, and make 
friendship with all; he had a sharp quick eye, ac- 
complished with an excellent discerning of persons, 
being of good judgment and quick wit. As for 
his person, he was tall of stature, strong-boned, 
though not corpulent, somewhat of a ruddy face, 
with sparkling eyes, wearing his hair on his upper 
lip after the old British fashion; his hair reddish, 
but in his latter days time had sprinkled it with 
grey; his nose well set, but not declining or bend- 
ing, and his mouth moderate large; his forehead 
something high and his habit always plain and 
modest." We learn also that he was called Bishop 
Bunyan by his enemies jeeringly, but by his 
friends because the title was deserved. The pref- 
ace to the Acceptable Sacrifice is written by George 
Cokayn, who belonged to a very old Bedford- 
shire family supposed to be descended from Sir 
John Cokayne of Cokayne-Hatley, who was Chief 
Baron of the Exchequer in 1401. George Cokayn 



LIFE AND ''GRACE ABOUNDING" 61, 

was educated at Cambridge, and was one of the 
clergy ejected in 1660. His congregation fol- 
lowed him and became the Independent Church 
in Redcross Street. In this preface Cokayne says 
of Bunyan, whom he well knew and loved, that, 
*' as himself sometimes acknowledged, he always 
needed the thorn in the flesh, and God in mercy 
sent it to him, lest, under his extraordinary cir- 
cumstances, he should be exalted above measure, 
which perhaps was the evil that did more easily 
beset him than any other." " God," adds Co- 
kayne, " who had much work for him to do, was 
still hewing and hammering him by his Word, 
and sometimes also by more than ordinary temp- 
tations and desertions." Bunyan confessed he 
needed " a maul." Once when he had preached 
with peculiar warmth and enlargement he was 
congratulated on his " sweet sermon." " Aye," 
he replied, " you need not remind me of that; for 
the Devil told me of it before I was out of the 
pulpit." At another time he brings himself up 
with the reflection, "Is it so much to be a 
fiddle?" 



64 JOHN BUNYAN 

The lines in these contemporary descriptions 
are convergent and form a picture which will 
perhaps become more distinct after we have dealt 
with Bunyan's writings. Meanwhile a quality 
In Bunyan may be noticed which is not generally 
recognized. He was not a clown, nor the poor 
creature whom Cowper dared not name, but an 
aristocrat in the proper sense of the word, a man 
of strength and dignity, who had an aptitude for 
ruling, and yet with gentleness. The portrait pre- 
fixed to the present volume confirms this estimate 
of him. It is a copy of the sketch on vellum by 
Robert White, almost certainly taken from life, 
which is preserved in the British Museum. White 
was a draughtsman and an engraver whose plates, 
says Mr. O'Donoghue in the Dictionary of Na- 
tional Biography, " have always been greatly 
valued for their accuracy as likenesses." The 
face is a poet's, and it is also the face of a man 
who would be obeyed. It is the face of the 
author of the Pilgrim's Progress, but It might be 
that of a great admiral or general. 



THE PREACHER 

A LARGE portion of Bunyan's works consists 
of expanded sermons. He probably would have 
told us that the commission with which he was 
entrusted was not religious allegory but the procla- 
mation of the Gospel in Bedford. The Pilgrim's 
Progress, the Holy War and the Life and Death 
of Mr. Badman are an overflow of that which 
could not find a place in the Sunday discourses. 

When Bunyan was writing the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress Newton had just come to the conclusion 
that the observed motions of the moon were In 
accordance with the law of gravitation. But there 
was no popular magazine In 1685, and his dis- 
covery was therefore communicated to the Royal 
Society. Nor would the motions of the moon 
have been thought to be of much importance by 
religious folk in those days If they could have 
learned anything about them. We now justly 
65 



66 JOHN BUNYAN 

consider that the calculations which it Is said 
that Newton, foreseeing to what they tended, 
could not finish through agitation, are a contribu- 
tion to theology greater than any which was made 
by Calvin; but if we had said this to our fore- 
fathers in the eighteenth century, they would not 
have known what we meant. Their science was 
that of God's direct relations with man, and they 
took little Interest in any other. Hence the 
preacher was of greater importance to them than 
he is to us, who busy ourselves with so much upon 
which he Is no authority, and who, as the Man- 
ager says In Faust, " have read a terrible deal " 
(haben schrecklich viel gelesen) . A quarter of 
an hour's modern talk in the pulpit once a week 
would have been a mockery to men who believed 
that there was nothing in life of much conse- 
quence save to discover what directions an inspired 
book gave to ensure salvation. 

We all strive to form some kind of theory of 
the world and its government, to build up some- 
thing by which we can live. Man is not only 



THE PREACHER 67 

the minister but the Interpreter of Nature, and 
the Impulse to interpret, to give a meaning and 
consistency to this transcendent Universe, is an 
irresistible passion. The theory for the Puritan 
was Calvinism, but It was not mere speculation, 
as we shall see presently. We find a full state- 
ment of it In Bunyan's Doctrine of the Law and 
Grace Unfolded, published in 1659. ^^ will be 
as well in giving some account of it to use as 
far as possible Bunyan's own words. We begin 
with a Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, 
who for His own pleasure has created man. Man, 
at the instigation of the Devil, transgressed God's 
commandment, and thereby fell under a curse 
of incapacity, inherited by his offspring, to fulfil 
the moral Law which God had set up. The pen- 
alty for infringing it was eternal damnation in 
hell. God the Father, so far. Is conceived as an 
abstract, unappeasable Justice. This conception 
is a part of Christianity generally, but Calvinlstic 
Puritanism, more pointedly than Roman Cathol- 
icism or Anglicanism, Insisted on the completeness 



68 JOHN BUNYAN 

of this logical abstraction In the Godhead and of 
the consequent opposition therein. " To be under 
the Law," says the Doctrine of Law and Grace, 
"as It Is a covenant of works, Is to be bound, 
upon pain of eternal damnation, to fulfil, and 
that completely and continually, every particular 
point of the ten commandments by doing of them. 
... If a man do fulfil nine of the command- 
ments, and yet breaketh but one, that, being 
broken, will as surely destroy him and shut him 
out from the joys of heaven as If he had actually 
transgressed against them all: for Indeed, In ef- 
fect, so he hath. . . . Though thou shouldst ful- 
fil this covenant, or law, even all of it, for a long 
time, ten, twenty, forty, fifty or three-score years, 
yet if thou do chance to slip and break one of 
them but once before thou die, thou art also gone 
and lost by that covenant. . . . This law doth 
not only condemn words and actions, as I said 
before, but it hath authority to condemn the most 
secret thoughts of the heart, being evil; so that 
if thou do not speak any word that is evil, as 



THE PREACHER 69 

swearing, lying, jesting, dissembling, or any other 
word that tendeth to, or savoureth of sin, yet if 
thou should chance to pass but one vain thought 
through thy heart but once in all thy lifetime, 
the law taketh hold of it, accuseth, and also will 
condemn thee for it: ... it leaves thee there as 
a cursed transgressor against God and a destroyer 
of thy own soul." The reason is plain. " If 
thou, having sinned but one sin against this cov- 
enant, and shouldst afterwards escape damning, 
God must be unfaithful to Himself and to His 
Word, which both agree as one. First, He would 
be unfaithful to Himself; to Himself that is, to 
His justice, holiness, righteousness, wisdom and 
power, if He should offer to stop the runnings out 
of His justice for the damning of them that have 
offended it. And secondly, He would be un- 
faithful to His Word, His written Word, and 
deny, disown and break that of which He hath 
said, * It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, 
than one tittle of the law to fail, or be made of 
none effect.' If a poor soul should plead for 



70 JOHN BUNYAN 

mercy under the law, each commandment will 
rise up against him crying, ' Damn him, damn 
him.' These ten great guns, the ten command- 
ments, will, with discharging themselves in jus- 
tice against thy soul, so rattle in thy conscience 
that thou wilt, in spite of thy truth, be imme- 
diately put to silence, and have thy mouth stopped. 
And let me tell thee further, that if thou shalt 
appear before God to have the ten command- 
ments discharge themselves against thee, thou 
hadst better be tied to a tree, and have ten, yea 
ten thousand of the biggest pieces of ordnance 
in the world to be shot off against thee; for these 
could go no further, but only to kill the body; 
but they, both body and soul, to be tormented in 
hell with the Devil to all eternity." 

Such is the Law and the condition of man 
under it. It may be permitted to remind the 
reader again that we are in the region of pure 
abstraction, devoid of concreteness as completely 
as Being, Nothing or any other scholastic in- 
vention, and, what is more important, it was an 



^, 



THE PREACHER 71 

abstraction to Bunyan. He soon begins to strike 
into the necessary opposite, that is to say, into 
something like reality. Before man fell God had 
determined a way for his salvation. " A glori- 
ous plot and contrivance was concluded on before 
time between the Father and the Son." They 
" shook hands " over it. The Son was to take 
upon Himself the body of man, and fulfil the 
demands of the Law for man. " So that now, let 
Divine and infinite justice turn itself which way 
it will, it finds one that can tell how to match 
it: for if it say, I will require the satisfaction 
of man, here is a man to satisfy its cry; and if it 
say. But I am an infinite God, and must and will 
have an infinite satisfaction : here is One also that 
is infinite, even fellow with God, fellow in His 
essence and being; fellow in His power and 
strength; fellow in His wisdom; fellow in His 
mercy and grace; together with the rest of the 
attributes of God; so that, I say, let justice turn 
itself which way it will, here is a complete person 
to give it a complete satisfaction." The satis- 



71 JOHN BUNYAN 

faction is for the elect who claim It and rest 
upon it. " This imputed life — for so it is — is the 
obedience of the Son of God as His righteous- 
ness, In His suffering, rising, ascending, interced- 
ing, and so consequently triumphing over all the 
enemies of the soul, and given to me, as being 
wrought on purpose for me. So that, is there 
righteousness in Christ? that is mine. Is there 
perfection in that righteousness? that is mine. 
Did He bleed for sin? it was for mine. Hath 
He overcome the Law, the Devil, and hell? the 
victory is mine and I am counted the conqueror, 
nay, more than a conqueror, through Him that 
hath loved me.'' We are now at some distance 
from the abstract Avenger. Man, ** filthy and 
leprous " as he is without the Redeemer, has be- 
come great. The virtue of the Saviour is " im- 
puted," but not without participation in it,^ and 
the humblest Christian is bound up with the 

^" There is a righteousness put into them (italics Bunyan's), 
... or I had rather that you should call it a principle of 
righteousness; for it is a principle of life to righteousness." 



THE PREACHER 73 

Eternal Son and shares His divinity. The soul 
for which Christ descended from heaven cannot 
be a trifle. " Would Christ," asks Bunyan in the 
Greatness of the Soul and Unspeakableness of 
the Loss thereof, " have done this for inconsider- 
able things? No, nor for the souls of sinners 
neither, had He not valued them higher than He 
valued heaven and earth besides." 

In many of Bunyan's sermons we have little 
more than a presentation of the " plan," the 
" scheme," the " plot " with variations, and pic- 
tures of hell and heaven as vivid as those in 
Dante. Nothing but the " plan " is seen in the 
Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The Old 
Testament is a prophetic type of it, and this is 
the reason why it is a part of our Scriptures. The 
fig-leaves wherewith Adam and Eve sought to 
cover their nakedness are natural righteousness, 
and the coats of skins are that which is imputed. 
Solomon's Temple Spiritualized is a long essay 
of nearly fifty pages, double columns, to prove 
that every part of the temple was a pre-figure- 



74 JOHN BUNYAN 

ment of things to come; and if the Bible is a 
verbally inspired manual of salvation, Bunyan 
was forced to assign a prophetic meaning to the 
story of Solomon's carpentry. What other rea- 
son could be given for its inclusion in the canon? 
The temple snuffers therefore are typical: our 
snuffs are superfluities of naughtiness, and the 
snuffers are righteous rebukes and admonitions, 
but, adds Bunyan, '* It Is not for every fool to 
handle snuffers at or about the candles, lest per- 
haps. Instead of mending the light, they put the 
candle out." The gate of the porch is the strait 
gate, and in reply to the objection that the porch 
gate was six cubits In breadth, Bunyan says, " Six 
cubits! what Is sixteen cubits to him who would 
enter In here with all the world on his back? 
The young man in the Gospel, who made such 
a noise for heaven, might have gone in easy 
enough; for In six cubits' breadth there is room: 
but, poor man, he was not for going in thither 
unless he might carry in his houses upon his shoul- 
der too, and now the gate was strait." The 



m 



THE PREACHER 75 

twelve oxen that supported the molten sea are 
the twelve apostles. Their hinder parts were in- 
ward, covered with the molten sea, which is the 
Gospel, " and indeed,'' so proceeds the exposition, 
'' it becomes a Gospel minister to have his un- 
comely parts covered with that grace which by 
the Gospel he preacheth unto others . . . but 
alas, there are too, too many who, can they but 
have their heads covered with a few Gospel no- 
tions, care not though their hinder parts are seen 
of all the world." This mode of treating the 
Bible was not peculiar to Bunyan. It was the 
orthodox method in his day and long afterwards. 
Benjamin Keach, one of his contemporaries and 
a much more learned man, published in two vol- 
umes folio a Tropologia, in which Aaron's ephod 
Is the righteousness of Christ and the pomegran- 
ate ornaments are the savour of this righteous- 
ness in the nostrils of God the Father. They 
contain a precious juice and virtue " to qualify 
and abate the raging heat of God's wrath." It is 
probable, thinks Keach, that Samson's marriage 



76 JOHN BUNYAN 

to a strange wife and the destruction of his ene- 
mies in his death are to be expounded as a type 
of Christ, who was spiritually married to the 
Gentiles and conquered His enemies by dying. 

Bunyan Is not always dogmatic In his sermons. 
" God," he cries in Christ a Complete Saviour, 
" Is the chief good. Good so as nothing Is but 
Himself. . . . God is the upholder of all crea- 
tures, and whatever they have that is a suitable 
good to their kind. It is from God; by God all 
things have their subsistence, and all the good 
that they enjoy. I cannot tell what to say; I am 
drowned! The life, the glory, the blessedness, 
the soul-satisfying goodness that is In God is be- 
yond all expression." He Insists on the Gospel 
of works as emphatically as on the Gospel of 
justification by faith. The Pharisee, in the Phari- 
see and Publican, Is commended because *' In my 
conscience he was better than many of our Eng- 
lish Christians; for many of them are so far off 
from being at all partakers of positive righteous- 
ness, that all their ministers, Bibles, good books, 



THE PREACHER 77 

good sermons, nor yet God's judgments, can per- 
suade them to become so much as negatively holy, 
that Is, to leave off evil." It is of so much Im- 
portance to understand that Bunyan was in the 
first place a preacher of righteousness, and to see 
the order In the articles of his creed, that quota- 
tion at a Httle greater length may be pardoned 
from the Barren Fig-tree, published In 1682. We 
shall also obtain from it some faint notion of 
what he must have been as an orator. The reader 
will be good enough to imagine these sentences 
spoken by the '' man tall of stature, somewhat 
of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes " ; " whose 
countenance," as the editors of the folio tell us, 
" did strike something of awe Into them that had 
nothing of the fear of God." 

The barren fig-tree Is the " fruitless professor." 
" When a man hath got a profession and is 
crowded into the house and Church of God, the 
question Is not now, Hath he life, hath he right 
principles? but Hath he fruit? He came seek- 
ing fruit thereon. It mattereth not who brought 



78 JOHN BUNYAN 

thee in hither, whether God or the Devil, or thine 
own vain-glorious heart; but hast thou fruit? 
. . . What do men meddle with religion for? 
Why do they call themselves by the name of the 
Lord Jesus if they have not the grace of God, 
if they have not the spirit of Christ? God, 
therefore, expecteth fruit. What do they in the 
vineyard? Let them work, or get them out; the 
vineyard must have labourers in it. . . . God 
expecteth fruit that will answer, and be worthy 
of the repentance which thou feignest thyself to 
have. . . . By thy profession thou hast said, I 
am sensible of the evil of sin. Now then, live 
such a life as declares that thou art sensible of the 
evil of sin. By thy profession thou hast said, I 
am sorry for my sin. Why, then, live such a 
life as may declare this sorrow." 

The Puritan Church in Bunyan's days was 
sharply marked off from the world, but even then 
there was a risk of contagion. Puritanism was 
not respectable, and It must have required some 
strength of mind in church members who were 



THE PREACHER 79 

tolerably well-to-do to keep themselves separate. 
The fear of persecution was not so dangerous as 
the desire to be recognized by the class socially 
superior. Bunyan warns his hearers against aping 
its manners. Let them beware of ^' pampering 
themselves without fear, daubing themselves with 
the lust-provoking fashions of the times; to walk 
with stretched out necks, naked breasts, frizzled 
foretops, wanton gestures, in gorgeous apparel, 
mixed with gold and pearl and costly array. . . . 
Barren fig-tree, can it be imagined that those that 
paint themselves did ever repent of their pride? 
or that those that pursue this world did ever re- 
pent of their covetousness ? or that those that 
walk with wanton eyes did ever repent of their 
fleshly lusts?" God will forsake these profess- 
ors: their punishment will be that they shall 
be " let alone." " Dost thou hear, barren pro- 
fessor? . . . Those that once seemed sons of the 
morning " shall " be permitted, being past feel- 
ing, to give themselves over unto lasciviousness, 
to work all uncleanness with greediness." The 



8o JOHN BUNYAN 

withdrawal of God! is not that enough? is not 
that hell? " If such a one be visited after the 
common way of mankind, either with sickness, 
distress or any kind of calamity, still no God ap- 
peareth, no sanctifying hand of God, no special 
mercy is mixed with the affliction. But he falls 
sick and grows well like a beast." Not only will 
God forsake, He will utterly destroy these pro- 
fessors. One of His most effectual methods Is 
"strong delusions; delusions that shall do; that 
shall make them believe a lie." They shall be 
*' judicially hardened," seared as with a hot iron, 
so that they " can never have sense, feeling or 
the least regret (italics the present commenta- 
tor's) In this world." 

The sentence to cut down the barren fig-tree 
Is not put into execution till Christ has done His 
best to save it. It may be " earth-bound " with 
the love of the world and the deceitfulness of 
riches. " He diggeth about him, he smiteth one 
blow at his heart, another blow at his lusts, a 
third at his pleasures, a fourth at his comforts, 



THE PREACHER 8i 

another at his self-conceitedness. . . . Barren fig- 
tree, see here the care, the love, the labour,^ and 
way which the Lord Jesus, the dresser of the 
vineyard. Is fain to take with thee. If haply thou 
mayest be made fruitful. . . . Thou professest 
to believe thou hast a share In another world: 
hast thou let go this, barren fig-tree? Thou pro- 
fessest thou bellevest In Christ: is He thy joy, 
and the life of thy soul? Yea, what conform- 
ity unto Him, to His sorrows and sufferings? 
What resemblance hath His crying, and groan- 
ing, and bleeding, and dying wrought in thee? 
Dost thou ' bear about In thy body the dying of 
the Lord Jesus ? ' and is also the life of Jesus 
made manifest In thy mortal body? Barren fig- 

1 When he (Johnson) would try to repeat the celebrated 
Prosa Ecclesiastica pro Mortuis, as it is called, beginning Dies 
irae. Dies ilia, he could never pass the stanza ending thus — 

** Tantus labor non sit caisus " 

without bursting into a flood of tears. Anecdotes of the late 
Samuel Johnson, LL,D., by Hester Lynch Piozzi (G. Birkbeck 
Hill's edition, p. 284). 



82 JOHN BUNYAN 

tree, * show me thy faith by thy works.' Show 
me out of a good conversation thy works with 
meekness of wisdom! . . . Barren soul, how 
many showers of grace, how many dews from 
heaven, how many times have the silver streams 
of the city of God run gliding by thy roots, to 
cause thee to bring forth fruit! These showers 
and streams, and the drops that hang upon thy 
boughs, will all be accounted for; and will they 
not testify against thee that thou oughtest of right 
to be burned? " 

- The Heavenly Footman^'^ is a posthumous 
tract which was published in 1698. It is charac- 
teristic of Bunyan's best work, as we have seen, 
that though the form of it may be theological 
there is a meaning in it which is human, and the 
great laws of nature, eternal as the stars, may 
be discerned in the discussions of texts. Bunyan 

1 This use of the word, says the Oxford Dictionary, is now 
nearly obsolete, except in dialect. It quotes from the London 
Gazette in 1685 : ** There will be a plate run for by footmen 
at Wigan." 



THE PREACHER 83 

IS often as rigid as any Calvinistic professor, but 
he is seldom opaque, non-transparent to the heav- 
enly light, and he was in fact drawn to Calvin- 
ism because of its relationship to that which is the 
same yesterday and to-day, yea, and for ever. 
The Heavenly Footman is a striking example of 
universality. The text is. So run, that ye may 
obtain, and of course the object to be obtained 
is salvation after death; but let us listen to the 
description of the kind of running which is neces- 
sary. It is to be a flying for life, a thrusting 
through everything that stands between heaven 
and the soul. *' Soul, take this counsel, and say, 
Satan, sin, lust, pleasure, profit, pride, friends, 
companions, and everything else, let me alone, 
stand of, come not nigh me, for I am running 
for heaven, for my soul, for God, for Christ, 
from hell and everlasting damnation. If I win, 
I win all; and if I lose, I lose all. Let me alone, 
for I will not hear. So run." We must not only 
repel that which is openly obstructive, we must 
refuse to be delayed by that which in itself is 



84 JOHN BUNYAN 

good. Plato Is a noble study; Buddhism is most 
Interesting; this or that social movement Is of 
Importance, but they may be fatal as sin if we 
have something to do which must be done. The 
running must be continuous, not by " fits and 
starts," but " for my life and to the end of my 
life . . . What I do you think that every heavy- 
heeled professor will have heaven?" A man 
may run and reach heaven's gate, and may even 
stand knocking at the gate, but may be too late; 
the tide which leads to fortune has been let slip. 
" And if these gates be once shut against a man, 
they are so heavy that all the men In the world, 
nor all the angels in heaven, are not able to open 
them." We shall have to run through a waste, 
howling wilderness, waste and howling as Bunyan 
well knew, and we shall be chased by fierce pur- 
suers, the Devil, the law, sin, death, and hell. 
Zeal alone is not sufficient. " For it is a vain 
thing to think that ever thou shalt have the prize, 
though thou runnest never so fast, unless thou art 
in the Way that leads to it. Set the case that 



THE PREACHER 85 

there should be a man in London, that was to 
run to York for a wager. Now though he run 
never so swiftly, yet if he run full south, he might 
run himself quickly out of breath, and be never 
the nearer the prize, but rather the farther off. 
Just so is it here; it is not simply the runner, nor 
yet the hasty runner, that winneth the crown, 
unless he be in the way that leadeth thereto. I 
have observed, that little time which I have been 
a professor, that there is a great running to and 
fro, some this way, and some that way; yet it is 
to be feared most of them are out of the way; 
and then though they run as swift as the eagle 
can fly, they are benefited nothing at all. Here 
is one runs a Quaking, another a Ranting; one 
again runs after the Baptism, and another after 
the Independency; here's one for freewill, and 
another for Presbytery, and yet possibly most 
of all these sects run quite the wrong way, and 
yet every one is for his life, his soul, either for 
heaven or hell." Bunyan warns his friends not 
to make a religion out of party distinctions. His 



86 JOHN BUNYAN 

religion was Jesus. We are to be planted in 
Him, have faith in Him, make a life out of Him. 
One of the signs by which we may know that we 
are In the Way Is that we muse on Him, and 
that His company " sweetens all things." 

We must strip for this race. " Thou talkest 
of going to heaven, and yet fillest thy pocket with 
stones." We are not to stare about us as we 
run, we are not to " pry overmuch Into God's 
secret decrees," or Into this or that " curiosity." 
We are not to have an ear open to everybody 
who calls us. " Men that run, you know. If any 
do call after them, saying, / would speak with 
you; or. Go not too fast, and you shall have my 
company with you, if they run for some great 
matter, they use to say, Alas! I cannot stay, I am 
in haste, pray talk not to me now!* The Cross 
is the Waymark to the kingdom of heaven. 
" Thou must go close by It, thou must touch It, 
nay, thou must take it up." Beware, says Bun- 
yan, before you see the cross, of stopping at 
some half-way house — one of his characteristic 



THE PREACHER 87 

bits of divine philosophy and of the wisdom of 
life. 

Another " direction " is to beg of God that 
the understanding may be enlightened and the 
will well " inflamed." The reason why men 
care so little about the other world is that they 
do not see it. We endure as seeing Him who 
Is invisible, and no endurance is possible unless 
we preserve our faith In that which Is beyond 
the reach of eyesight. But, says Bunyan, " I tell 
you the Will is all." It was the will which sup- 
ported the saints in martyrdom. If we had asked 
him how the understanding was to be enlightened, 
and how the will was to be inflamed, the only 
answer would have been a repetition of the coun- 
sel to pray to God, but the prayer presupposes 
that for which we pray, and so It comes to this 
at last that we are in God's hand, and that when 
we pray He prays through us. 

We have seen what Bunyan makes of the Cities 
of Refuge. That blessed Institution was very 
dear to him. We are to run for the City lest 



88 JOHN BUNYAN 

an everlasting stop be put to our journey. When 
we get there we are not to venture outside. Bun- 
yan intends conviction of safety, certainty. It is 
possible after much struggle to become secure. 
We shall then do well to tolerate no further dis- 
pute. Obstinacy may be mere stupidity, but there 
is an intelligent obstinacy which is a virtue. 

Partly recapitulating what has gone before, 
the Heavenly Footman concludes with some 
" uses." It is not enough " to keep company 
with the hindmost." Lot^s wife lagged to give 
but one look behind her, and was lost as com- 
pletely as if she had remained in Sodom. He 
that runs lazily, who seeks to drive the world 
and pleasure before him, is the cause of damna- 
tion to others. " Look to it, thou wilt have 
strength little enough to appear before God, to 
give an account of the loss of thy own soul, thou 
needest not have to give an account for others, 
why thou dost stop them from entering in." Let 
no one take an example of those who " stagger 
or loiter." Rather let us imitate Lot, who, when 



THE PREACHER 89 

the judgment fell upon his wife, did not look 
behind him. There is no more serious passage 
in all Bunyan's writings than this, but he cannot 
suppress humour. " I have sometimes won- 
dered," he adds, " at Lot in this particular. His 
wife looked behind her, and died immediately; 
but let what would become of her. Lot would not 
so much as look behind him to see her. We do 
not read that he did so much as once look where 
she was, or what was become of her." 

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of 
Christ. Bunyan's gloss on Saint Paul is " learn 
of no man farther than he followeth Christ," no 
matter what his genius may be. Religion is the 
worship of an ideal, and in these days, therefore, 
when every man has a score of ideals, religion 
Is difficult. It Is doubtful, in fact, whether it 
Is possible. 

This brief notice of the Heavenly Footman 
may be closed by an extract from it which for 
simple eloquence can perhaps hardly be matched. 
" To encourage thee a little farther, set to the 



90 JOHN BUNYAN 

work, and when thou hast run thyself down 
weary, then the Lord Jesus will take thee up 
and carry thee. Is not this enough to make any 
poor soul begin his race? Thou (perhaps) crlest, 
* O, but I am feeble, I am lame,' etc.; well, but 
Christ hath a bosom; consider, therefore, when 
thou hast run thyself down weary. He will put 
thee in His bosom. He shall gather the lambs 
with His arms, and carry them in His bosom, 
and shall gently lead those that are with young. 
This is the way that fathers take to encourage 
their children, saying. Run, sweet bahe, while thou 
art weary, and then I will take thee up and carry 
thee. He will gather His lambs with His arms 
and carry them in His bosom; when they are 
weary, they shall ride." No wonder that, as 
Charles Doe records, twelve hundred people have 
been seen listening to Bunyan in London at seven 
o'clock in the morning on a working-day in the 
dark winter. Doe computed that at a Lord's 
Day service which he attended in a town's-end 
meeting-house three thousand came to hear this 



THE PREACHER 91 

wonderful orator, half of them being obliged to 
go back for want of room, and that, entering by 
a back door, he had to be pulled almost over men's 
heads, to get upstairs to his pulpit. 

There is no evidence that Bunyan had read 
many theological books, but there was one that 
he did read which was of the greatest moment 
to him, and its influence on his own works is so 
marked that some account of it must be given. 
It was Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the 
Galatians. He fell in with it just before Grace 
Abounding had triumphed, and thus reports: 
*^ But before I got thus far out of these my 
temptations, I did greatly long to see some an- 
cient godly man's experience who had writ some 
hundreds of years before I was born; for those 
who had writ in our days, I thought (but I de- 
sire them now to pardon me), that they had writ 
only that which others felt, or else had, through 
the strength of their wits and parts, studied to 
answer such objections as they perceived others 
were perplexed with, without going down them- 



92 JOHN BUNYAN 

selves into the deep. Well, after many such 
longings In my mind, the God In whose hands 
are all our days and ways did cast into my hand, 
one day, a book of Martin Luther; it was his 
comment on the Galatlans — it also was so old 
that It was ready to fall piece from piece If I did 
but turn It over. Now I was pleased much that 
such an old book had fallen Into my hands; the 
which, when I had but a little way perused, I 
found my condition, in his experience, so largely 
and profoundly handled, as If his book had been 
written out of my heart. This made me marvel; 
for thus, thought I, This man could not know 
anything of the state of Christians now, hut must 
needs write and speak the experience of former 
days. Besides, he doth most gravely also in that 
book debate of the rise of these temptations, 
namely, blasphemy, desperation, and the like; 
showing that the Law of Moses, as well as the 
Devil, death and hell hath a very great hand 
therein. The which, at first, was very strange 
to me; but considering and watching, I found 



I 



THE PREACHER 93 

it so Indeed. But of particulars here I Intend 
nothing; only this, methinks, I must let fall be- 
fore all men, I do prefer this book of Martin 
Luther upon the Galatians (excepting the Holy 
Bible) before all the books that ever I have 
seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience." 

What Bunyan meant we may be able presently 
dimly to understand. The copy of the Commen- 
tary which he read was probably the translation 
of 1575 with the imprimatur of " Edwinnus, 
London," that is to say. Bishop Sandys, after- 
wards Archbishop of York. He commends It as 
" most comfortable to all afflicted consciences ex- 
ercised In the School of Christ," and officially 
stamps It as a manual of " most necessary devo- 
tion." What we call Puritanism was then ac- 
cepted by the Church of England. The trans- 
lators are not known. " They refuse to be 
named, seeking neither their own gain nor glory, 
but thinking It their happiness. If by any means 
they may relieve afflicted minds, and do good 
to the Church of Christ, yielding all glory to 



94 JOHN BUNYAN 

God, to whom all glory is due." Healing of 
wounds, comfort to afflicted consciences, relief 
to afflicted minds, this was the attraction of this 
theological Commentary to Bunyan, the Bishop 
and his anonymous friends. 

The Commentary was first published in 1535, 
and the lectures on which it was founded were 
delivered in 153 1. It is chiefly an explanation 
and defence of that great article in PauFs creed 
that we are not to be saved by the law, but by 
faith in Jesus Christ; and through about six hun- 
dred pages it says the same thing over and over 
again, so that now few persons, except under com- 
pulsion, would persevere to the end of it. The 
reason for the continual repetition is partly that 
Paul continually repeats himself, partly that it 
is a reproduction of oral discourses, and partly 
and mainly that Luther was never tired of his 
subject. He confesses that he was tedious, and 
his apology is that he did so desire to " beat into 
the heads " of his disciples the Gospel he was 
commissioned to deliver. Although it is weari- 



THE PREACHER 95 

some, the Commentary Is a historical monument, 
and for this and other reasons is well worth 
study. It Is a record of what such a man as 
Luther actually believed, and It is the text-book 
of a great religion. The iterations, we find, are 
not those of mumbling torpor, but of a prophet 
too much in earnest to be diversified. We dis- 
cover also In it much wit, in the ancient sense 
of the word, reminding us often of Bunyan, and 
many noble passages eloquent in substance as well 
as In form. 

It is impossible to understand creeds of any 
kind unless we know their history and that of 
the times In which they originated. This Is par- 
ticularly true of Lutheranism. Luther rebelled 
against the notion that on the easiest terms men 
can be redeemed from the penalty due to what 
they are by nature and what they have done. It 
is only by the substitution of a true belief that erro- 
neous belief can be destroyed; and Luther found, 
or supposed he found. In the Inspired Epistles 
to the Romans and Galatlans the antidote to the 



96 JOHN BUNYAN 

Popish heresy. The fervour with which he main- 
tains justification by faith alone is explained al- 
most on every other page of the Commentary by 
the abominations of Rome. " The Justiciaries and 
Merit-mongers will not receive grace and ever- 
lasting life of Him freely, but will desire the 
same by their own works. For this cause they 
would utterly take from Him the glory of His 
divinity." That the " hypocritical works and 
merits of monks and friars " are " desert in the 
eyes of God " is " doctrine of devils." " Why 
was Christ born? Why was He crucified? Why 
did He suffer? Why was He made my High 
Priest, loving me and giving Himself an inesti- 
mable sacrifice for me? In vain, no doubt, and 
to no purpose at all, if righteousness come by no 
other means than the Papists teach; for without 
grace and without Christ I find no righteousness 
either in myself or in the law. Is this horrible 
blasphemy to be suffered or dissembled, that the 
Divine Majesty, not sparing His own dear Son, 
but delivering Him to death for us all, should 



THE PREACHER 97 

not do all these things seriously and in good ear- 
nest, but as it were in sport? Before I would 
admit this blasphemy, I would not only that the 
holiness of all the papists and merit-mongers, but 
also of all the saints and holy angels, should be 
thrown into the bottom of hell and condemned 
with the Devil. Mine eyes shall behold nothing 
else but this inestimable price, my Lord and Sav- 
iour Christ. He ought to be such a treasure unto 
me, that all other things should be but dung in 
comparison of Him. He ought to be such a light 
unto me, that when I have apprehended Him 
by faith, I should not know whether there be any 
law, any sin, any righteousness, or any unright- 
eousness in the world. For what are all things 
which are in heaven and earth in comparison of 
the Son of God, Christ Jesus my Lord and Sav- 
iour, who loved me and gave Himself for me? '' 
In this passage Justification by Faith is at a white 
heat, and what man is there who does not feel 
the fire in it? 

Luther goes farther than any other Christian 



98 JOHN BUNYAN 

doctor of divinity would venture In these days. 
" And this (no doubt) all the prophets did fore- 
see in spirit, that Christ should become the great- 
est transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, 
and blasphemer that ever was or could be in all 
the world. For He being made a sacrifice for the 
sins of the whole world, is not now an innocent 
person and without sins, is not now the Son of 
God born of the Virgin Mary, but a sinner, which 
hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a 
blasphemer, an oppressor and a persecutor; of 
Peter, which denied Christ; of David, which was 
an adulterer, a murderer, and caused the Gen- 
tiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord; and 
briefly, which hath and beareth all the sins of all 
men in His body ; not that He Himself committed 
them, but for that He received them being com- 
mitted or done of us, and laid them upon His 
own body that He might make satisfaction for 
them with His own blood. . . . Hereby it ap- 
peareth that the doctrine of the Gospel (which 
of all others is most sweet and full of singular 



THE PREACHER 99 

consolation) speaketh nothing of our works or of 
the works of the Law, but of the inestimable 
mercy and love of God towards us most wretched 
and miserable sinners; to wit, that our most mer- 
ciful Father, seeing us to be oppressed and over- 
whelmed with the curse of the Law, and so to 
be holden under the same that we could never be 
delivered from it by our own power, sent His only 
Son into the world, and laid upon Him all the 
sins of all men, saying. Be Thou Peter that denier; 
Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel op- 
pressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which 
did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which 
hanged upon the cross; and, briefly, be Thou the 
person which hath committed the sins of all 
men." 

Luther and Bunyan had both known what it 
was to be prostrate under a conviction of impo- 
tence and sin, and consequently under the curse 
of damnation. It is all well-nigh inconceivable 
and fantastic to us. The overwhelming sense of 
guilt is dead. If we ever feel guilty, we can par- 



loo JOHN BUNYAN 

don ourselves without any ado. Luther said he 
would have been driven to suicide if he could 
have found no escape. Relief was given in the 
conception of a Mediator, which in the Commen- 
tary assumes a grandeur far beyond that of any 
figure in mythological poetry. The Christ who 
hangs on the cross is the personification of Pity, 
of that Spirit which for ever strives against the 
relentlessness of Nature, the Spirit which for- 
gives and immediately begins to close the wound 
with soft new flesh. If Christ appears to us as 
a " lawgiver that requireth a strait account of 
our life past, then let us assure ourselves that it is 
not Christ, but a raging fiend. . . . He addeth 
not affliction to the afflicted; He breaketh not the 
bruised reed, neither quencheth He the smoking 
flax." To Luther Christ is the God for man. 
He goes so far as to say that " in the matter of 
justification " there is no other God besides this 
man Christ Jesus "... Thou must withdraw 
thy mind wholly from all cogitations and search- 
ing of the Majesty of God, and look only upon 



£^mm\ 



THE PREACHER loi 

this man Jesus Christ . . . We must not think 
(as before we have warned you) that by the curi- 
ous searching of the Majesty of God anything 
concerning God can he known to our salvation 
(italics the present writer's), but by taking hold 
of Christ, who, according to the will of the 
Father, hath given Himself to death for our sins." 
Luther's religion, therefore, like Bunyan's, is 
really Christ\2imty : it is the worship not of an 
abstraction, but of Jesus. 

The work of Christ and mystical union with 
Him, is so much to Luther that it looks for the 
moment as if he did not make enough of moral- 
ity. But we know what he intends to say. Mo- 
rality is not coin by which an equivalent is to be 
bought. After we have done all that is pre- 
scribed, we say to ourselves — what is it! Never 
do we feel our merit less than when we are at 
our best. Are the most spotless virtues of such 
redeeming efficacy as the love of the woman who 
brought the alabaster box and stood at the feet 
of Jesus weeping, and began to wash His feet 



loa JOHN BUNYAN 

with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of 
her head, and kissed His feet and anointed them 
with the ointment? As it appears in catechisms 
and articles, Luther's " imputed righteousness " 
may be a thing foreign to us; we may be unable 
to do anything with it, but in so far as it means 
that we are saved by the righteousness of another 
man whom we worship it is true. It must not be 
mere admiration, but a passionate devotion which 
grafts Him on us, so that in Him and by Him 
we live. 

Luther, like Bunyan, is perfectly sane, and he 
is hotter against those to whom justification by 
faith is an excuse for licence than he is against 
the Pope. The apples, he says, do not bear the 
tree, but the tree must bear apples. If it does 
not, then the sentence he would pass on it is that 
of Bunyan on the barren fig-tree. He notices 
with singular felicity that Paul calls the Christian 
virtues the fruits of the spirit, and not its works. 
They are its outcome, naturally begotten by it. 
The only " liberty " Luther grants is the liberty 



THE PREACHER 103 

of his Lord. Paul exhorts the Galatians to stand 
fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made 
us free, and Luther's note is that " there is a 
fleshly, or rather a devilish liberty, whereby the 
Devil chiefly reigneth throughout the whole 
world. For they that enjoy this liberty obey 
neither God nor laws, but do what they list. This 
liberty the people seek and embrace at this day; 
and so do the Sectaries, which will be at liberty 
in their opinions and in all their doings, to the 
end they may teach and do whatsoever they dream 
to be good and sound, without reprehension. 
These stand in that liberty wherein the Devil hath 
made them free." Luther knew the sorrows of an 
apostle. He had to endure the pain of seeing his 
dearest beliefs mauled, misused, and pressed into 
the service of Satan. Is there any figure sadder 
than that of the Reformer who finds that he has 
enlisted as professed disciples foolish creatures 
who are a worse hindrance to him than his avowed 
enemies? Luther characteristically wishes that 
many whom he had emancipated had remained 



I04 JOHN BUNYAN 

slaves. " If faith be preached (as of necessity 
it must be), the more part of men understand 
the doctrine of faith carnally, and draw the lib- 
erty of the spirit Into the liberty of the flesh. 
This may we see In all kinds of life, as well of 
the high as the low. All boast themselves to be 
professors of the Gospel, and all brag of Christ- 
Ian liberty, and yet, sowing their own lusts, they 
give themselves to covetousness, pleasures, pride, 
envy, and such other vices. No man doth his 
duty faithfully, no man charitably serveth the 
necessity of his brother. The grief hereof maketh 
me sometimes so impatient, that many times I 
wish such swine, which tread precious pearls under 
their feet, were yet still remaining under the tyr- 
anny of the Pope, for it is impossible that this 
people of Gomorrah should be governed by the 
Gospel of peace." 

We may now be able to see perhaps how much 
Luther had done for Bunyan. His " wounded 
conscience " was made whole. He crouched no 
longer in terror with the burden on his back under 



THE PREACHER 105 

that Hill which flashed fire on Christian, and he 
was enabled to walk in freedom by faith. But 
it was probably the contagion of Luther's strength 
which was most serviceable to him. Luther also 
had '' gone down into the deep." He had not 
" studied to answer " objections which were not 
his own. The Commentary is a polemic against 
Rome and the Anabaptists, but it is also the his- 
tory of a more arduous, but victorious struggle 
with himself. 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 

The first part of the Pilgrim's Progress was 
published in 1678. The opening sentence with 
the marginal note shows that it was written in 
prison, and Dr. Brown supposes that the impris- 
onment was that of 1676. It is not likely that 
Bunyan would have delayed its publication for six 
years from 1672, when he was released from his 
long confinement in the county gaol, and the pref- 
atory verses seem to show that it was printed al- 
most immediately after it was finished. The sec- 
ond part was not published till 1685, ^^^ it is as 
well to deal with both parts together.^ 

1 It is not necessary to waste words over the attempt to prove 
plagiarism in The Pilgrim'' s Progress ^ from De Guile ville's Pil- 
grimage of Man. Let the curious reader turn over a few pages 
of Dr. Furnivall's edition of the Pilgrimage y and he will need 
no further evidence that Bunyan owes nothing to it. 
106 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 107 

Coleridge in his later years praised the Pil- 
grim^ s Progress as being '' incomparably the best 
Summa Theologia Evangelic^ ever produced by 
a writer not miraculously inspired. . . . All the 
doctors of the Sorbonne could not have better 
stated the Gospel medium between Pelagianism 
and Antinomian-Solifidianism, more properly 
named Sterilifidianism." ^ This may be true, but 
its virtues as an antidote to these heresies or as 
a medium between them cannot be set forth here. 
It will be more profitable just now to notice a 
few of the humanities of the book. It is almost 
entirely the story of the pilgrimage of man, not 
of Puritan man especially, but man in all ages. 
We will use for the most part Bunyan's own 
words, so that it may be seen how little transla- 
tion they need. 

At the beginning we find ourselves in a City 
of Destruction where the larger portion of man- 
kind dwelt, including a certain " Christian," who, 
being informed that the city was to be burnt with 
^Literary Remains, iii. 392, 410 (edn. 1838). 



io8 JOHN BUNYAN 

fire, determined to escape. He was directed by 
Evangelist to a wicket gate across a very wide 
field. Pliable, a neighbour, at first offered to go 
with him and even urged him to mend his pace, 
but Christian had a burden on his back and Pli- 
able was unencumbered. Presently both of them 
fell into the Slough of Despond, an eternal bog, 
not to be mended although it was not the pleasure 
^ of the King that it should be there. Twenty mi4- 
^^\^^^' lion cart-loads of wholesome instructions had 
been brought from all parts of his dominions and 
had been pitched in it to make good ground, but 
they had been swallowed up, and against change 
of weather it did much spue out its filth. Bun- 
yan probably intended that the change of weather 
should be taken literally. Christian and Pliable 
were much bedaubed, but Pliable, having no bur- 
den, got out of the mire on the side next to his 
own house and went home. Christian tried to 
struggle through the bog and towards the wicket 
gate, but might have been suffocated if Help had 
not appeared and drawn him out. Help came 



I 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 109 

suddenly, miraculously. Christian was in the 
Slough and found himself on dry land. It is clear 
however that if he had not obstinately striven to 
keep his head above the mud, Help would not 
have saved him. He went his way by himself 
and encountered Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, who, as 
we are particularly informed, was a gentleman. 
He advised Christian to disregard the trouble- 
some counsel of Evangelist and to ease himself of 
his burden by applying to Mr. Legality, who 
dwelt in the town of Morality. He had a son 
named Civility, who was as well able as his father 
to give relief. But Christian did not get far 
enough to try the experiment. He certainly would 
have found that Legality and Civility were in- 
competent to diminish by one ounce a load such 
as he bore. He was terrified, having wandered 
out of the way, by flashes of fire from a mountain 
which made him sweat and quake for fear. Evan- 
gelist redirected him to the wicket gate. Just as 
he was entering, the porter, whose name was 
Goodwill, gave him a pull, for Beelzebub had 



no JOHN BUNYAN 

built a strong castle over against the gate whence 
he shot arrows at those who came up to it. He 
was shown in a narrow Way. That was to be his 
road to liberty and salvation. It was cast up 
by the patriarchs, prophets, Christ and His apos- 
tles, and was as straight as a rule could make it. 
Many ways butted down upon it, but they were 
crooked and wide. The first lodge he reached 
was the house of the Interpreter, where he saw 
strange emblems, and amongst them was a stately 
palace in which certain persons walked who were 
clothed in gold. At the door was a large com- 
pany desirous to go in, but durst not, for men in 
armour kept it. A man with an inkhorn sat there 
also to take the name of him who should pass. 
At last one with a stout countenance came up and 
said to him with the inkhorn: "Set down my 
name, sir," whereupon he armed himself, and 
after a deadly struggle cut his way through, was 
received with pleasant melody and was attired 
with the golden robes. Then Christian smiled 
and said, " I think verily I know the meaning of 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS '^ iii 

this." The marginal note refers us to the four- 
teenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, in 
which we learn how Paul having been stoned and 
drawn out of Lystra as dead, rose up, and went 
on his way exhorting the disciples that we must 
through much tribulation enter the kingdom of 
God. To Bunyan courage is the root of all virtue. 
The Interpreter set Christian on his road again, 
and he came to a Cross where the burden fell 
from his back, tumbled into the sepulchre and was 
seen no more. The way in which Bunyan makes r/ 
it drop, without any effort on Christian's part, 
is very striking. He did not touch a knot; the 
words are: "Just as Christian came up with the 
Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders." 
He was so amazed that the mere sight of the 
Cross should work this miracle that he stood still 
and wondered, and the water ran down his cheeks. 
But this was not all, for three shining ones stepped 
up to him, took away his rags, put new raiment 
on him, set a mark upon his forehead, and gave 
him a roll with a seal on it, which would be a cer- 



112 JOHN BUNYAN 

tificate for him when he came to the Celestial City. 
Intrusive comment on a passage like this would 
be properly resented, but it may be suggested 
that the reader should ask himself whether he 
can remember elsewhere a more perfect expres- 
sion of the essence of Christianity than Bunyan's 
description of the effect produced by simply look- 
ing at the sacred symbol. 

Christian presently met Formalist and Hypoc- 
risy, who had made a short cut into the Way 
by climbing a wall, and who assured him that it 
did not matter how you get into the Way pro- 
vided you do get in. But Bunyan knew that it 
matters very much, and both of them were lost, 
one in a great wood and the other amongst dark 
mountains. At the palace called Beautiful Chris- 
tian found a welcome lodging, but before he could 
come up to it he had to pass through a narrow 
passage and espied two lions in it. They were 
chained, but he saw not the chains, and he was 
afraid, for he thought death was before him. The 
porter called out to him not to fear, for, as they 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 113 

were chained, if he would but keep in the middle 
of the path no harm would befall him. He went 
on, heard them roar, and reached the gate safely. 
He slept in a large upper chamber whose win- 
dow opened towards the sunrising, and, happy 
pilgrim, it was so quiet that its name was Peace. 
In the morning the lesson of the Interpreter's 
house was repeated, and he was again strength- 
ened by examples, a surer method than precept, 
of what men have accomplished in extremity by 
the help of the weapons of the Lord. He was 
shown the pitchers and trumpets and lamps where- 
with Gideon put to flight the armies of Midian, 
and the sling and stone with which David slew 
Goliah of Gath. The next day, from the top of 
the house, looking south, he was able to see the 
Delectable Mountains. From those mountains it 
was possible to descry the Celestial City. But 
alas ! between them and him the Way lay through 
a dangerous country far below. He descended 
into the Valley of Humiliation almost immedi- 
ately after leaving the Palace and was stopped 



114 JOHN BUNYAN 

by ApoUyon. He would have retreated if he 
had not reflected that he had no armour for his 
back. Apollyon straddled quite over the whole 
breadth of the road, a fearful, complex demon, 
hideous, with the scales of a fish, wings of a 
dragon, feet of a bear, and mouth of a lion. He 
disputed with Christian, and reproached him with 
faint-heartedness and with the mistakes he had 
made on his journey. A battle ensued, which 
lasted half a day. When Christian was almost 
spent with wounds, Apollyon came to close quar- 
ters and wrestled with him, so that his sword flew 
out of his hand. Imagine the embrace of a scaly 
monster, out of whose belly came fire and smoke ! 
But as God would have it (there is no further 
explanation), while Apollyon was fetching his 
last blow, his very last, to make a full end of him, 
Christian nimbly caught his sword and therewith 
dealt the fiend such a thrust that he spread his 
dragon wings, sped him away, and was seen no 
more. Christian's wounds were healed by a Hand 
which " came to him " with some of the leaves 
of the Tree of Life, 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 115 

No sooner had Christian left the Valley of 
Humiliation than he found himself In another, 
the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The Way 
lay through the midst of it. Over it hung the 
" discouraging clouds of confusion "; It was " ut- 
terly without order," a land of unspeakable mis- 
ery. The Delectable Mountains lying south on 
the clear horizon were blocked out here. The 
mouth of Hell stood hard by the narrow path, 
and Christian's sword was of no avail against the 
terrors and dangers with which he was now beset. 
The worst of the trials, recalling the Grace 
Abounding, was that he did not know his own 
voice, and the blasphemies which the wicked ones 
whispered to him he verily thought proceeded 
from himself. He had half a mind to go back, 
but he remembered " he had already vanquished 
many a danger." ^ By-and-by the day broke, and 

* " O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum), 
O passi graviora, dabitDeus his quoque finem." 

— jEneidy i. 198-9. 
Another familiar passage in the jEneid is brought to recollec- 



ii6 JOHN BUNYAN 

then said Christian, He hath turned the shadow 
of death into the morning. This is from the 
prophet Amos, and it may not be amiss to quote 
it with the context. Seek Him that maketh the 
seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow 
of death into the morning, and maketh the day 
dark with night: that calleth for the waters of 
the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the 
earth: the Lord is His name, that strengtheneth 
the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled 
shall come against the fortress. 

After escaping from the Valley Christian over- 
took Faithful, who was also bound to the Celes- 
tial City. Faithful had met with dangers but 

tion by the uselessness of Christian's sword against hellish hor- 
rors — 

*' Corripit hie subita trepidus formidine ferrum 
-^neas, strictam que aciem venientibus offert ; 
Et ni docta comes tenues sine corpore vitas 
Admoneat volitare cava sub imagine formae, 
Irruat, et n-ustra ferro diverberet umbras.'* 

— Mneidy vi. 290-4. 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 117 

they were not Christian's. Madam Wanton nearly 
captured him, and he was also attacked by a cer- 
tain Shame, quite misnamed, for he was a bold- 
faced rascal, and almost beat him off. Shame 
reproached him for his ignorance and " want of 
understanding in all natural science." Pilgrims 
were poor men of base and low estate, who were 
ridiculously prejudiced against the great because 
of a few vices. But Faithful bethought himself 
that he should be judged " according to the Wis- 
dom and Law of the Highest " and that they who 
make themselves fools for the Kingdom of 
Heaven are wisest. As Faithful and Christian 
journeyed together they came up to Talkative, 
also bound heavenwards. He was desirous of 
relieving the weariness of the journey by conver- 
sation and was willing to discuss anything, " the 
History or Mystery of Things," or " Miracles, 
Wonders or Signs." He was eloquent upon Chris- 
tian's favourite doctrine, the insufficiency of 
works, and our need of Christ's Righteousness. 
Faithful was rather taken with him, but Christian 



ii8 JOHN BUNYAN 

knew him too well. He would chatter upon all 
these subjects on the ale-bench, and the more drink 
he had in his crown the more of these things he 
had in his mouth. " At the day of Doom," adds 
Christian, " men shall be judged by their fruits. 
It will not be said then, ' Did you believe? ' but, 
* Were you doers, or talkers only? ' " This is a 
sentence not to be forgotten in our estimate of 
Bunyan's theology, and recalls the Barren Fig- 
tree. Faithful, at Christian's suggestion, put some 
searching questions to Talkative, who concluded 
therefrom that Faithful was " a melancholy man, 
not fit to be discoursed with," and left the com- 
pany. 

The Pilgrims now found themselves in Vanity 
Fair. Through that great city also ran the Way. 
All sorts of merchandise were sold In the Fair, 
" whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, mas- 
ters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, 
gold, pearls, precious stones and what not." It 
was a Fair of very ancient standing. The people 
in it were much excited when they saw the Pil- 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 119 

grims, and there was a great hubbub. They 
were charged with creating the riotous confusion 
which was the work of their enemies, and re- 
manded to the assizes. They were Indicted for . 
Injuring the trade of the town, for causing com- 
motions and divisions and for the propagation of 
" most dangerous opinions." Their trial we may 
take to be a picture of what Bunyan himself had 
seen and undergone. The judge was my Lord 
Hategood. Faithful was first brought to the bar. 
He protested that he was no disturber of the 
peace, and that those who had been converted by 
himself and Christian had been won solely " by 
beholding our truth and innocence." But he im- 
mediately began to preach open rebellion to Hate- 
good's face. "As to the King you talk of, since 
he is Beelzebub, the enemy of our Lord, I defy 
him and all his angels." This Is exactly the posi- 
tion In which we found ourselves when Mr. Cobb 
visited Bunyan in gaol. Beelzebub ruled by the 
will of a large majority of the people of the land; 
and if Faithful and Christian refused to obey 



120 JOHN BUNYAN 

him, they could not expect to escape punishment. 
They were perfectly prepared. Witnesses, after 
Faithful's declaration, were unnecessary, but they 
were brought. Mr. Envy stood forth, and be- 
gan: " My Lord, I have known this man a long 
time, and will attest upon my oath, before this 

honourable Bench, that he Is " but the Judge 

stopped him. "Hold," he cried; "give him his 
oath." My Lord had a delicate conscience for 
the forms of justice, and would not for the world 
permit that a man's life should be taken away on 
unsworn evidence. Mr. Envy testified that he had 
heard the prisoner affirm that Christianity and 
the customs of the town of Vanity were diametri- 
cally opposite and could not be reconciled. Mr. 
Superstition and Mr. Pickthank followed for the 
prosecution, and when Faithful pleaded that he 
might be allowed to defend himself Hategood 
broke out against him and told him he did not 
deserve to live. Nevertheless he was permitted 
to speak, that all men might see the gentleness of 
the Court to him. He denied the accuracy of 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 121 

Envy's evidence, but made his case worse than be- 
fore, for he vowed " that the Prince of this town, 
with all the rabblement his attendants, by this gen- 
tleman named, are more fit for a being in hell than 
in this town and country; and so the Lord have 
mercy on me.'^ The Judge then charged the jury, 
and laid down the law. It was derived from 
sundry Acts passed in the days of Pharaoh the 
Great, Nebuchadnezzar the Great, and Darius. 
The Act of Pharaoh the Great was especially con- 
clusive, Inasmuch as It was preventive. The ver- 
dict, of course, was Guilty. Faithful was tortured 
and then burnt at the stake. A chariot and horses 
waited for him and took him up through the 
clouds to the Celestial City. Christian escaped 
and found a travelling companion In Hopeful, 
a convert through Christian's and Faithful's fidel- 
ity. They came up with Mr. By-ends, who waited 
for wind and tide, and who had married a very 
virtuous woman, a titled lady who had arrived 
" at such a pitch of breeding that she knows how 
to carry It to all, even to prince and peasant." 



122 JOHN BUNYAN 

He fell behind Christian and Hopeful, not being 
able to agree with them, and was overtaken by 
three of his friends, Hold-the- World, Money-love 
and Save-all. By-ends, for their better diversion, 
propounded a question for consideration. Sup- 
pose a poor minister, a worthy man, can get a 
better living by being more studious, by preach- 
ing more zealously and by altering a few of his 
principles, may he not do this honestly? By-ends 
opined that he might. His desire of the greater 
benefice is certainly lawful, and the wish to im- 
prove his parts is according to the mind of God. 
The compliance with the will of his people " by 
dissenting,^ to serve them, some of his principles,'' 
argues " a self-denying temper, a sweet and win- 
ning deportment," and makes him generally more 
fit for his office. Hold-the-World, Money-love 
and Save-all were of one mind with By-ends, and 
they agreed to hear what Christian had to say 

^ So in the early editions, corrected by subsequent editors to 
** deserting," etc. The Oxford Dictionary, however, gives 
other examples of the w^ord used transitively. 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS '^ 123 

upon the subject. The discussion how far the 
minister might go would be a pleasant relief to 
the fatigues of the Way. But Christian utterly 
refused to debate the point; a " babe in religion " 
might settle it, and those who made their religion 
a stalking-horse were no better than " heathens, 
hypocrites, devils or witches." 

A little further on Christian and Hopeful were 
accosted by a Mr. Demas, who invited them to 
share the profits of a silver mine which stood a 
little off the road. They would not go near it, 
although Demas protested he was one of their 
fraternity; but By-ends and his companions went 
at the first beck. Whether they fell into the pit, 
whether they went down to dig or were smothered 
in the bottom by damps is not known, but certainly 
they were never seen again. 

By foolishly leaving the Way because It was 
rough, and taking to a by-path in a meadow. 
Christian and Hopeful fell in with Giant Despair 
of Doubting Castle, who put them In a grievous 
dungeon, where they lay from Wednesday morn- 



124 JOHN BUNYAN 

Ing till Saturday night (a touch reminding us of 
Defoe). It was dark, nasty and stinking, and 
they had nothing to eat or drink and no light. 
On Thursday the Giant battered them with a 
crab-tree cudgel. On Friday morning he came 
again and suggested suicide to them, and when 
they prayed to be let go he rushed on them to 
make an end of them. Fortunately, at that mo- 
ment he fell into a fit, for sometimes " in sun- 
shiny weather " he fell into fits and lost the use 
of his hand. Towards evening he once more 
visited his prisoners. They were barely alive, and 
he threatened them so dreadfully that Christian 
was willing to take his advice and kill himself. 
Hopeful comforted him by reminding him of his 
victories over Apollyon and the demons of the 
Valley of the Shadow, and of his brave behaviour 
in Vanity Fair. On Saturday morning the Giant 
had them Into the castle yard and showed them 
the bones and skulls of those he had already dis- 
patched. He declared that within ten days Chris- 
tian and Hopeful should come to the same end, 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 125 

and he then beat them all the way down to their 
horrible quarters. At midnight that same Satur- 
day they began to pray, and a little before day 
on Sunday morning Christian exclaimed that he 
was a fool to have forgotten a key called Promise 
in his bosom, and he pulled it out. It opened the 
dungeon door and also the yard door. The lock 
of the outer gate went " damnable hard " but 
yielded. It creaked so badly that the Giant 
awoke and tried to pursue the Pilgrims. He 
failed, however, for he was again taken with a fit, 
and they were soon on the King's Highway and 
out of his jurisdiction. By the skin of their teeth 
had they escaped. That very Saturday night, 
when Mrs. Diffidence, the Giant's wife, and her 
husband, '' were got to bed, they began to renew 
their discourse of their prisoners, and withal the 
old Giant wondered that he could, neither by his 
blows nor counsel, bring them to an end. And 
with that his wife replied, * I fear,' said she, * that 
they live in hope that some will come to relieve 
them, or that they have picklocks about them by 



126 JOHN BUNYAN 

the means of which they hope to escape.' * And 
sayest thou so, my dear? ' said the Giant; * I will 
therefore search them in the morning.' " 

They reached the Delectable Mountains, where 
by means of a perspective glass they saw some- 
thing like the gate of the Celestial City and the 
glory of it. They might have seen more, but their 
hands shook, for they were shown even from the 
Delectable Mountains a door in a hill, a by-way 
to Hell, and they heard the cries of the damned. 
They continued their journey, and Christian told 
Hopeful what happened to Little-Faith. He was 
making for the City and was attacked by three 
sturdy rogues, Faint-heart, Mistrust and Guilt. 
He was felled to the ground by Guilt; but the 
thieves hearing somebody on the road, and fear- 
ing lest it should be one Great-grace, took to their 
heels, leaving Little-Faith to " scrabble " on his 
way. He did not lose his jewels, but " the thieves 
got most of his spending money." Neither did 
he lose his certificate, but he did not make much 
use of it the rest of his pilgrimage, and indeed 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 127 

almost forgot It, so dismayed was he that his 
money was gone. Hopeful thought that these 
three fellows were but cowards and that Little- 
Faith might have plucked up a greater heart, to 
which Christian replied that " although they are 
but journeyman thieves they serve under the King 
of the Bottomless Pit, who, if need be, will come 
In to their aid himself." 

At last the Pilgrims reached the bank of the 
dread River. Christian had gone through four 
great perils, the Slough of Despond, the fight with 
Apollyon, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
and Doubting Castle. In the fight, as well as In 
the Valley and In the Castle, he no longer had the 
burden on his back. These four were his main 
trials, for the persecution In Vanity Fair was en- 
dured In triumph, and they all represent nearly 
the same trouble. The only reason which can be 
given for a fourfold description of It, Is that It 
was felt so vividly. Bunyan understood the sor- 
row of sorrows which Love and Faith are not al- 
ways able to overcome, the " blind thoughts we 



128 JOHN BUNYAN 

know not nor can name." There was now one 
more terror to be vanquished, and, blessed be 
God, It was the last. The River must be crossed, 
but he was assured that he would find it deeper 
or shallower according as he believed in the King 
of the Place. Nevertheless, when he and Hope- 
ful addressed themselves to go down Into it, a 
grievous darkness and horror fell upon Christian; 
he could not see before him; in a great measure 
he lost his senses and was so dismayed with ap- 
paritions of hobgoblins and evil spirits (even unto 
the end!) that Hopeful had much ado to keep his 
brother's head above water. The allegory nobly 
fails here. Bunyan could not sacrifice truth to a 
story. The burden had gone; Apollyon, when 
he was vanquished, spread forth his dragon's 
wings, and sped him away, that he was seen no 
more; the Slough, the Valley of the Shadow, and 
Doubting Castle had been passed, but the griev- 
ous darkness and horror of the Valley encompass 
Christian, and he almost loses his senses by devil- 
ish assaults, although he is within a stone's throw 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 129 

of heaven. Life is a conflict to the last, and this 
fact ought to be once for all admitted and con- 
stantly before us. We shall not be so disheart- 
ened if we do not expect that which has never 
been promised. When we get up in the morning 
we must say to ourselves that to-day will be as 
yesterday; the old tormenting thoughts and im- 
ages will beset us till we are at peace in death. 

It was soon at an end: Christian caught sight 
of the Lord Jesus, and the enemy after that was 
as still as a stone till they had gone over. Two 
Shining Ones received them on the other side. 
*' Just as the gates were opened to let in the men," 
says Bunyan, " I looked in after them." 

The second part of the Pilgrim's Progress is 
usually considered to be inferior to the first, and 
on the whole it is so. But at many points it is 
by no means the worse. 

Christiana, Christian's wife, with her children, 
left the City of Destruction because she desired 
to escape the Wrath to come and also because 
she wanted to see her husband, for " nature can 



I30 JOHN BUNYAN 

do no less but entertain the living with many a 
heavy cogitation in the remembrance of the loss 
of loving relations." She was disturbed also with 
thoughts of her " churlish carriages to him when 
he was under his distress." The ladies of the 
city set her down as a fool; Mrs. Bat's-eyes, as 
might be expected, was of opinion that her poor 
friend was blind. Christiana was not to be 
shaken, and a young woman, Mercy, was drawn 
to go with her. By looking well to the steps, they 
got through the Slough of Despond staggeringly, 
but much more easily than Christian. Another 
touch is added to the description of this great 
bog: there are many who pretend to be the 
King's labourers authorized to repair it, and they 
do but throw dirt and dung into it and make it 
fouler and deeper. Close to the wicket gate a 
great dog barked furiously and strove to prevent 
entrance. Mercy when she got inside the gate 
asked the keeper why he kept such a cruel beast. 
" That dog," replied he, " has another owner 
, . , but I take all at present patiently. I also 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 131 

give my pilgrims timely help." Bunyan could say 
no more. At the Interpreter's house were shown 
the marvels that Christian saw, and also others, 
the most notable perhaps being the man with the 
muckrake, who could look no way but downwards 
and whose sole occupation was to rake up straws, 
small sticks, and dust of the floor, never for a 
moment turning his eyes to One above him who 
offered him a celestial crown for the muckrake. 
He is, of course, the " carnal mind " ; but the simil- 
itude has other applications which easily suggest 
themselves. 

The pilgrims were put In charge of Greatheart 
and continued their journey. On a gallows by 
the roadside. Simple, Sloth, and Presumption were 
hanging in Irons. Christian had passed them, and 
then they were asleep. They were executed for 
beguiling travellers, amongst whom were Slow- 
pace, Short-wind, No-heart, Linger-after-lust, 
Sleepy-head and *' a young woman, her name was 
Dull." Of this young woman it is much to be 
regretted that Bunyan did not give us a further 



132 JOHN BUNYAN 

account. At the foot of the hill Difficulty the 
spring at which Christian drank was muddy, pur- 
posely stirred up by mischievous people who were 
not desirous that any should quench their thirst in 
it. Greatheart advised that the water should be 
put into a clean vessel and that they should wait 
^' till the dirt had gone to the bottom." This 
they did and then drank thereof. 

In the Valley of Humiliation there was no 
Apollyon: it was a pleasant place, "free from 
the noise and from the hurryings of this life, but 
Christiana saw her husband's blood on the stones 
and also some of the shivers of Apollyon's broken 
darts. The Valley of the Shadow of Death was 
not so terrible as it was to Christian, but it was 
bad enough. They heard a great groaning and 
the ground shook under them as if it were hol- 
low. So it is indeed in that Valley, for it covers 
but with a thin crust the bottomless abyss. The 
children asked when they would be at the end of 
the doleful place, but Greatheart's answer vas 
to be of good courage and look well to their feet. 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'^ 133 

Christiana espied in front of them a thing of 
such a shape as she had never beheld before. 
Greatheart directed those who were afraid that 
they should keep close to him: the Fiend came 
on, but lo ! " when it was just come to him, it van- 
ished to all their sights." Mercy then, looking 
behind her, descried, as she thought, something 
most like a lion, and it came " a great padding 
pace after," and roared so loud that the Valley 
echoed, and all their hearts, save the heart of their 
guide, did ache. He put all his charge in front 
of him and addressed himself to give it battle, 
when it drew back and went no farther. They 
nearly tumbled into a pit cast up the whole 
breadth of the Way, and a great mist and dark- 
ness fell upon them. There they were stopped 
and heard " apparently the noise and rushing of 
the enemies " and discerned " the fire also and 
the smoke of the Pit." The marginal note is 
Christiana now knows what her husband suffered. 
" Many have spoke of it," cried she, '' but none 
can tell what the Valley of the Shadow of Death 



134 JOHN BUN Y AN 

should mean, until they come In It themselves. 
The heart knows Its own bitterness, and a stranger 
intermeddleth not with Its joy." " This," replied 
Greatheart, " Is like doing business In great waters, 
or like going down Into the deep; this Is like be- 
ing in the heart of the sea, and like going down 
to the bottoms of the mountains. Now it seems 
as If the earth with its bars were about us for 
ever." Greatheart called on them to pray '* for 
light to Him that can lighten our darkness, and 
that can rebuke, not only these, but all the Satans 
in hell. So they cried and prayed, and God sent 
light and deliverance, for there was now no let 
in their way, no, not there where but now they 
were stopped with a pit." The end, however, 
was not yet. They were annoyed with " great 
stinks and loathsome smells." Again one of the 
children anxiously inquired if the outlet were near, 
and again they were bidden look to their feet, a 
necessary command, for they were amongst snares. 
In the ditch on the left hand lay one Heedless, 
with his flesh all rent and torn, a warning, ob- 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 135 

served Greatheart, " not to set out lightly on pil- 
grimage and to come without a guide." It was 
a wonder Christian escaped, " but he was beloved 
of his God, also he had a good heart of his own, 
or else he could never a done It." The Valley 
now began to open, but just as they were leaving 
It, they were confronted by Maul, a giant, who 
" did use to spoil young pilgrims with sophistry." 
The fight with him taxed all Greatheart's skill 
and strength. At the first blow he was struck 
down upon his knees. After an hour's struggle 
they were both so much exhausted that they had 
to rest. Greatheart betook himself to prayer, and 
when he was a little refreshed he felled the giant 
to the ground. " Nay, hold, and let me recover," 
quoth he. '' So Mr. Greatheart fairly let him 
get up; so to It they went again; and the giant 
missed but little of all to breaking Mr. Great- 
heart's skull with his club." Greatheart, how- 
ever, was able to pierce him under the fifth rib 
and put an end to him. His head was cut off and 
fixed on a pillar for the comfort and encourage- 



136 JOHN BUNYAN 

ment of those who should follow. The generosity 
of Greatheart in allowing Maul a breathing space 
will be noticed. It may not be necessary to the 
allegory, but it is a picturesque stroke which is 
Bunyan's own. Perhaps he may have meant to 
show the unwisdom of forbearance with such an 
adversary. The battle with this well-nigh invin- 
cible sophist who spoiled young pilgrims was as 
severe as that with Apollyon, although Great- 
heart was an appointed champion, one of the 
immediate servants of the Most High. Under 
an oak an old pilgrim lay asleep. He was Mr. 
Honest, " a cock of the right kind," as Great- 
heart called him. He was born in the town of 
Stupidity, about four degrees beyond the " City 
of Destruction." Greatheart knew this town 
well: it was worse than the City itself. Honest 
admitted it was so. Stupidity lay northward, 
" more off from the sun." Did the young woman 
whose name was Dull hail from it? Honest was 
a man who had lived to some purpose. He had 
taken notice of many things. He could tell of 



**THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'' 137 

people who when they set out for Paradise " say 
positively, there is such a place, who when they 
have been almost there, have come back again 
and say there Is none." He had learned at his 
time of life not " to bless himself with the mis- 
take " that the decays of nature "are a gracious 
conquest over corruptions." It is Honest who 
gives us the character of Mr. Fearing, the prin- 
cipal figure in the Second Part of the Pilgrim's 
Progress, and perhaps in the whole of it. Every 
stroke in the drawing is firm and indicative. He 
lay at the Slough of Despond for above a month 
" till one sunshiny morning, I do not know how," 
says Bunyan, he ventured and got over. When 
he was over he would scarce believe it. He stood 
shaking and shrinking at the wicket gate, but 
would not go back again. " It would have pitied 
one's heart to have seen him." At the Interpre- 
ter's he was more comfortable. The lord of the 
place gave him a bottle of spirits and something 
to eat to help him on his journey. He passed 
the gibbet on which Simple, Sloth, and Presump- 



138 JOHN BUN Y AN 

tion were hanged, and doubted that it would be 
his end also, but he was glad and cheery at the 
sight of the cross and sepulchre, made no stick 
at the Hill Difficulty, nor did he much fear the 
lions. Greatheart conducted him to the House 
Beautiful and introduced him to the damsels there, 
but he remained " dumpish." He was never bet- 
ter than in the Valley of Humiliation and would 
lie down, embrace the ground, and kiss the flow- 
ers that grew there. In the Valley of the Shadow 
he was ready to die with fear, but Greatheart 
*' took very great notice that this Valley was as 
quiet while he went through it as ever I knew 
it before or since." At Vanity Fair he would 
have fought with all the men in the Fair, so hot 
was he against their fooleries, and upon the En- 
chanted Ground was very wakeful. But at the 
River he was in a heavy case, for " now, now 
he should be drowned for ever and so never see 
that face with comfort that he had come so many 
miles to behold." This was the reason, or at 
any rate it is the only reason given, why he feared 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'' 139 

" drowning " in death. It was remarkable that 
the River was lower at this time than it had ever 
been in the memory of man, and so he went over 
at last not much above wet-shod. 

Honest declared that Fearing was one of the 
most troublesome pilgrims he ever met with in 
all his days, and indeed he must have required 
great patience. He was " dejected at every diffi- 
culty and stumbled at every straw that anybody 
cast in his way, and yet he could have * bit a fire- 
brand.' " Greatheart, if he had not been a guide 
of such experience, must have wondered that a 
man who was indifferent to lions would hide be- 
hind a screen when he was in company. Fearing 
undoubtedly lived in Bedford, and most likely 
was not much thought of there, a silly creature, 
a failure in business, never consulted, pushed aside 
by successful and superior people, and despised 
by women as well as by men. But the Interpre- 
ter " being very tender to them that are afraid 
. . . carried it wonderful lovingly to him." The 
Interpreter knew that there may be a meaning 



I40 JOHN BUNYAN 

in poor souls who mean nothing to their neigh- 
bours, and he also knew how to decipher It. Bun- 
yan was so drawn to Fearing's type of character 
that he has three or four times repeated it with 
minor variations. We have Little-Faith In the 
First Part; and in the Second Part, Feeblemind, 
Ready-to-halt, Despondency, and Much-afraid his 
daughter. Feeble-mind belonged to the town of 
Uncertain, and was Fearing's nephew. He had 
his uncle's " whitely look" and cast of the eye; 
but the uncle was " a little shorter." Feeblemind 
was never well at home, and hoped he might be 
better if he went on pilgrimage. He had no 
strength of body, but he thought that if he could 
not walk he could crawl. At the house of the 
Interpreter he received much kindness, and be- 
cause the Hill Difficulty was too much for him 
he was carried up by one of the servants. The 
travellers who passed him on the way told him 
that it was the will of the Lord that comfort 
should be given to such as he, " and so went on 
their own pace " (italics Bunyan's). He fell Into 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 141 

the hands of Slaygood, a cannibal monster. In 
the nick of time Greatheart, who had " walked 
into the fields " to see if he could do any good 
by ridding the country of a giant or two, came 
up and found Slaygood rifling Feeblemind with 
intent to pick his bones. Slaygood himself was 
slain after more than an hour's fighting. Feeble- 
mind was brought to the inn and told his story — 
Slaygood had challenged him, and bid him make 
ready, but he confessed he had more need of a 
cordial. And yet when his enemy stood over him 
he " conceited " he would not be killed, no, not 
even when he was dragged into the den. He hesi- 
tated whether he should accompany Christiana 
and the others lest he should be an encumbrance, 
but Greatheart assured him that it was in his com- 
mission to support the feeble, and that he and 
those he escorted would be made all things to him 
rather than he should be left behind. How he 
behaved at the River we shall see. Mr. Ready- 
to-halt hobbled on crutches. Despondency and 
his daughter were discovered afterwards In the 



142 JOHN BUNYAN 

dungeons of Giant Despair, and had been almost 
starved to death. The Shepherds on the Delect- 
able Mountains invited Feeblemind, Ready-to- 
halt, Despondency, and Much-afraid to enter the 
Palace ^ first. '' These," said the Shepherds, " we 
call in by name, for that they are most subject 
to drawback; but as for you, and the rest that 
are strong, we leave you to your wonted liberty." 
Bunyan, by his treatment of the incapable, the 
imperfect, and even diseased, shows that he has 
entered into the soul of Christianity, the gospel, 
not of the rights of the strong, but of the first 
few verses of the fifth chapter of Saint Matthew, 
the gospel of Jesus. Sharp definitions and con- 
trasts of different religions are untrue and mis- 
leading, but nevertheless we may say that Chris- 
tianity is distinguished by its protest against the 
natural tendency to idolize strength and success. 
What are the differences of our endowments to 

1 Bunyan has forgotten that there was no palace on the De- 
lectable Mountains — nothing but tents. He may have been 
thinking of the House Beautiful. 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 143 

Him from whom we all come and to whom we all 
return ! 

The townsfolk of Vanity now offered no moles- 
tation. Persecution had subsided. The second 
part of the Progress was written at some time 
between 1678 and 1685, when the nation was vio- 
lently antipopish. Near Vanity was a dragon 
with seven heads and ten horns. It was attacked 
by Greatheart and other valiant worthies, and it 
" is verily believed by some that the beast will 
die of his wounds." Doubting Castle was reached, 
and Greatheart determined to make an attempt 
upon its master. Despair was not afraid, for 
'' thought he, I have made a conquest of angels." 
Greatheart and his comrades had as much as they 
could do to put an end to him, for he had " as 
many lives as a cat," but he and his wife Diffidence 
were killed at last, and the castle was demolished. 
Despondency, and his daughter Much-afraid, as 
already said, were found in the dungeons, which 
were full of dead men's bones. On the Delect- 
able Mountains a man was pointed out who "turn- 



144 JOHN BUNYAN 

bled the hills about with words." He was there 
to teach those on the Way " how to believe down, 
or to tumble out of their ways what difficulties 
they shall meet with, by Faith." The marginal 
reference is to the verse in Saint Mark promising 
to faith the removal of mountains. A little 
farther on the party met Mr. Valiant-for-truth. 
His sword was drawn and his face was all bloody. 
He had fought with three thieves till his sword 
clave to his hand, and the blood ran through his 
fingers. He might have been overpowered, but, 
the old Bunyan lesson, they suddenly took to 
flight, hearing no doubt the tramp of Greatheart's 
horse. Valiant-for-truth was a native of Dark- 
land. By chance a Mr. Tell-true came there, who 
acquainted him with Christian's adventures and 
his reception into the celestial city. Valiant-for- 
truth " fell into a burning haste " to follow, al- 
though his father and mother did all they could 
to dissuade him. They set before him the dangers 
and horrors of the expedition, and declared that 
Christian " was certainly drowned in the black 




Photo Mrs. Delves, Broughton. 

Pulpit in Elstow Church, 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 145 

River, and never went foot further, however it 
was smothered up." Greatheart naturally asked 
whether these things did not discourage him. It 
does not appear that he took any pains to exam- 
ine the evidence for them: they seemed as "so 
many nothings." After hearing the other side 
he still believed Tell-truth, " and that," said he, 
" carried me beyond them all." 

The last and perhaps the worst peril of the 
Way was the Enchanted Ground. It is described 
more fully than in the First Part. It was over- 
grown with briars and thorns, hard going for the 
feet; it was covered with a great mist and dark- 
ness, and it was a drowsy land. The mist and 
darkness were so thick that Greatheart " strook 
a light (for he never goes without his tinder- 
box)," and consulted his map. In the midst of 
the Ground was an arbour delicately furnished 
with benches, settles, and a soft couch, but if a 
man should rest thereon he will never wake again. 
In this arbour lay two men, Heedless and Too- 
bold, fast asleep, who could not be roused, but 



146 JOHN BUNYAN 

talked nonsense when they were shaken. The 
Enchanted Ground has been supposed to be Bun- 
yan's warning against the Declaration of Indul- 
gence, but it is more probably intended as a pic- 
ture of that deadly land in which distinction and 
differences vanish, and there is no speech excepting 
that of dreams and nightmares. Those that die 
here " die of no violent distemper. The death 
which such die is not grievous to them." Bun- 
yan's genius puts the ground " nigh to the land 
Beulah and near the end of the Race." There 
it is that the cloud descends, there it is that eye- 
sight and resolution begin to fail. In a few min- 
utes " a wind arose that drove away the fog " 
(the same note as before), and the air cleared. 
They heard a solemn noise and beheld a man on 
his knees In prayer. Honest recognized him as 
Mr. Standfast. He had been accosted by Ma- 
dam Bubble, " a tall, comely dame, something 
of a swarthy complexion " . . . " the mistress of 
the World," who would not be repulsed. Stand- 
fast was weary and sleepy, but had strength 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 147 

enough to pray " with hands lift up/' whereupon 
the " gentlewoman " departed. A gentlewoman! 
and yet a " bold and impudent slut , . . many 
has she brought to the halter, and ten thousand 
times more to hell." 

The next stage was Beulah. It lay on the bank 
of the black River, but the sun shone there night 
and day, the bells were continuously ringing and 
trumpets sounding, for it was continuously visited 
by Shining Ones from the other side. Here those 
who were to cross the River waited for the " good 
hour." At the appointed time each received a 
message directing preparation. To Christiana was 
sent an Arrow with a Point sharpened with Love. 
She was quite calm, and entered the River with 
a beckon of farewell. The post came to Mr. 
Ready-to-halt, and to him the sign was / have 
broken thy golden Bowl and loosed thy silver 
Cord. At the brink he cried, " Now I shall have 
no more need of these crutches," and threw them 
away. The horn was sounded at Mr. Feeble- 
mind's door. His token was Those that look out 



148 JOHN BUNYAN 

of the windows shall he darkened. His last 
words were " Hold out, Faith and Patience." 
The proof for Mr. Despondency was The Grass- 
hopper to he a Burden unto him. He warned 
those around him against his " disponds and slav- 
ish fears. After his death they would offer them- 
selves to others, but now he discerned that they 
were but " ghosts," and the doors are to be shut 
against them. He took leave with a Farewell 
Night, welcome Day. His daughter, Much- 
afraid, would not leave her father, and passed 
the River singing, " but none could understand 
what she said." The language may have been 
that of the land to which she was going. The 
authenticity of Mr. Honest's summons was veri- 
fied by the text All thy daughters of Music shall 
he brought low. He would make no will. As for 
his honesty, it should go with him. The River 
had overflowed its banks, but Good-conscience 
met him and helped him through. Nevertheless, 
his dying utterance was Grace reigns, a very re- 
markable dying utterance from Honest with the 



*^THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'' 149 

arms of Good-conscience underneath him. Mr. 
Valiant-for-truth found that his Pitcher was broken 
at the Fountain, ** My sword," he proudly ex- 
claimed, *' I give to him that shall succeed me in 
my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him 
that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with 
me, to be a witness for me, that I have fought 
his battles, who now will be my rewarder." Last 
of all Mr. Standfast received his orders. *^ Thy 
Wheeiy said the messenger, " is broken at the 
Cistern,^' and Mr. Standfast knew thereby that 
he was called by the King. There was a great 
calm on the day of his departure, and when he 
was half way in the River he talked to those who 
had accompanied him to the edge. " This River 
has been a terror to many, yea the thoughts of 
it also have often frighted me. But now, me- 
thinks, I stand easy, my foot is fixed upon that 
upon which the feet of the priests that bare the 
ark of the covenant stood while Israel went over 
this Jordan." The words of the book of Joshua 
are — And it shall come to pass, as soon as the 



I50 JOHN BUNYAN 

soles of the feet of the priests that hear the ark 
of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest 
in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan 
shall be cut off from the waters that come down 
from above; and they shall stand upon an heap 
. . . And the priests that bare the ark of the cov- 
enant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground 
in the midst of Jordan. Thus the flood of Death 
was held back as a wall from Mr. Valiant-for- 
truth. While he spoke, his countenance changed, 
the strong man bowed under him; he was heard 
to pray, " Take me, for I come unto thee,'* and 
then " he ceased to be seen of them." There is 
nothing in the first part of the Pilgrim's Progress 
greater than the closing passages of the second. 
They are very simple and restrained, but their 
grandeur and pathos can hardly be equalled in 
any English book except the Bible. 

Bunyan takes it for granted that the life of 
a man who is redeemed by the grace of God is 
a pilgrimage to a better world. This, of course, 
is the leading thought in his book, and it is one 



"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 151 

which we find most difficult to make our own. 
We can follow him through all the incidents of 
his journey; we know the Valley of Humiliation, 
the Valley of the Shadow, and Doubting Castle, 
but we are not sure, as he was sure, that the way- 
farer will reach a celestial home at last. Upon 
this subject most of us will hesitate to speak. V^e 
may hope and we may even believe, but an unmis- 
takable instinct warns us to be silent. Perhaps, 
however, without disobeying it, we may be per- 
mitted to say almost In a whisper, that a man 
who has passed from youth to age cannot natu- 
rally rest in the sad conviction that what he has 
learned Is to go for nothing, and that In no sense 
Is there any continuance for him. Our faith may 
have no demonstrable foundation, and yet It may 
be a refuge for us. Our lives are shaped by so- 
called dreams. 



THE "LIFE AND DEATH OF 
MR. BADMAN." 

The Life and Death of Mr, Badman was pub- 
lished in 1680. It Is a Pilgrim's Progress to hell, 
the biography of a sinner, a fair specimen of a 
large class with which Bunyan was well acquainted 
in Bedford town. He was terrified at the dis- 
soluteness of the times. It was " above the tops 
of the mountains. It had corrupted our young 
men, made our old men beasts, deflowered our 
virgins and made matrons bawds.'' Nor was this 
the only vice which everywhere prevailed. There 
was a general looseness of all moral obligation, 
dissoluteness etymologically, and men atheistically 
questioned whether there was any reason for do- 
ing good stronger than for doing evil. Bunyan, 
in a passage of awful and unsurpassable elo- 
152 



"MR. BADMAN" 153 

quence, sets forth how it lay upon him to pro- 
claim the word spoken to him, and thus concludes : 
" In and by this outcry I shall deliver myself 
from the ruins of them that perish: for a man 
can do no more in this matter — I mean a man in 
my capacity — than to detect and condemn the 
wickedness, warn the evil-doer of the judgment, 
and fly therefrom myself." It weighed him 
down, that he could do so little, that even in 
Bedford he could not lower the flood of iniquity 
by an inch, and that the world would have been 
nearly the same if he had never been born. But 
he knew that with results he had nothing to do. 
He was to " deliver " the word with which he 
had been entrusted and leave it. The Life and 
Death must have been very close to facts, for he 
gives reasons for concealing real names. 

Badman was a master sinner from childhood, 
although his parents were virtuous. He was a 
brazen-faced liar. The devil is the father of 
lies, and therefore " that soul that telleth a known 
lie, has lien with and conceived it by lying with 



154 JOHN BUNYAN 

the devil." * Badman was also a thief, who stole 
from his father. Bunyan diverges to tell that 
story about " old Tod," which so much struck 
Browning that he turned it into a poem, calling 
it " Ned Bratts." '' At a summer assizes at Hert- 
ford about the year 1660 or a little before," says 
Bunyan, " old Tod came into court in a green 
suit, with his leathern girdle in his hand, his 
bosom open and all on a dung sweat, as if he had 
run for his life." He broke out into vehement 
self-accusation that he was the veriest rogue upon 
the face of the earth, and that he had been privy 
for years to all the robberies in those parts.^ The 

^ Young Badman was flogged for lying, and Bunyan' s edi- 
tor, Mr. Offor, for once protests. ** After bringing up a 
very large family," he says, **who are a blessing to their par- 
ents, I have yet to learn what part of the human body was 
created to be beaten." 

2 According to Browning, the presiding judge was a ** Chief 
Justice Jukes. " We have had no Chief Justice of that name. 
In 1 866 the Reverend John Jukes died, who had been minister 
of Bunyan meeting-house for twenty-six years. Browning had 
probably heard of Mr. Jukes, and when he published Ned Bratts 



"MR. BADMAN" 155 

judges at first thought him mad, but, after con- 
sultation, agreed to hang Tod, together with his 
wife, who accompanied him. According to 
Browning, Ned Bratts was executed after the 
publication of the Pilgrim/s Progress, but Bun- 
yan puts the date '' twenty years ago or more." 
He does not say whether Tod was damned. We 
may hope with some confidence that he was not. 
Badman swore terribly. Bunyan is put to it 
to know why men swear, and thinks it may be 
because they imagine that they show themselves 
valiant, or gentlemanlike; or more probably the 
devil, knowing it to be wrong, prompts them to 
do it. Badman also was guilty of cursing, that 
is to say, sentencing men to evil unjustly — a 
grievous sin, for it implies scorn and contempt for 
the image of God. He was apprenticed to a 
good master, who gave him good books to read, 

the name Jukes was in his head, but he had forgotten how it 
came there. That a Carolinian Chief Justice sentencing his 
**two dozen odd" should be a Jukes is very comical to those 
who remember the worthy pastor. 



156 JOHN BUNYAN 

but Badman preferred beastly romances such as 
" set all fleshly lusts on fire," and he sought the 
company of scoundrels like himself, who speedily 
made him " an arch " in all their ways. " An ill 
hap," observes Mr. Attentive, who listens to the 
story as told by Mr. Wiseman. '' You must 
rather word it thus," replies Mr. Wiseman, " it 
was the judgment of God. . . . God chose his 
delusions and deluders for him, even the company 
of base men, of fools, that he might be de- 
stroyed." He became a drunkard and a whore- 
master, and Bunyan gives some horrible examples 
of the penalties inflicted even in this world upon 
drunkenness and uncleanness. He ran away from 
his master and engaged himself to one as bad as 
himself. He was now " a sinner in grain." He 
went into business on his own account, but got 
into debt, and his creditors threatened him. He 
was somewhat sick of his pleasures; for the devil 
had " rid him almost off his legs." He therefore 
determined to turn pious and marry a rich, godly 
wife. A short time after the marriage he turned 



"MR. BADMAN" 157 

back to his old courses, and treated her with great 
cruelty. He then became bankrupt in most mod- 
ern style. All the property he possessed was se- 
cured in such a way that his creditors could not 
touch it. Bunyan expands In three chapters upon 
Badman's methods of doing business and on the 
tricks of trade. He takes for one of his texts 
those passionate words of the herdman of Tekoa : 
^' Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even 
to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When 
will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn ? 
and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, 
making the ephah small and the shekel great and 
falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may 
buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair 
of shoes: yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? 
The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, 
Surely I will never forget any of their works." 

Badman had deceitful weights, one set by which 
he bought and another by which he sold, and 
he could use sleight of hand. It Is an affliction 
to Bunyan that this abominable cheating, " plain 



158 JOHN BUNYAN 

robbery," should be practised by Christians, al- 
though it is loathed by heathens who have not the 
word of God. One of the reasons why the sin 
is so heinous is that the poor suffer so severely by 
it. An ounce in the pound is nothing to the rich, 
but it is much to the poor man. " God shall weigh 
and judge you," cries Bunyan. The sentence will 
be '' Tekel, thou art weighed in the balances and 
art found wanting." . . . Thou " shalt be shut 
out from His kingdom for ever and ever." Let 
there be no plea of custom for fraud, he adds, as 
if he had in view a common defence against prose- 
cution under the Adulteration Acts of to-day. 
^' Shall that acquit you before the tribunal of 
God? " Nay, judgment may be expected even in 
this life. *' Fluster and huff, and make ado for 
a while the cheat may, but God hath determined 
that both he and his prosperity shall melt like 
grease." Badman mixed his goods the worst with 
the best, so that the worst might go off without 
mistrust, and would infallibly demand payment 
twice if he knew that a sufficient receipt could not 



*'MR. BADMAN" 159 

be produced. He was an extortioner, that is to 
say, he " screwed from men more than by the law 
of God or men is right." Bunyan gives us two 
chapters on political economy. As might be ex- 
pected, it is not scientific. It is the political econ- 
omy of the Prophets and the New Testament. Ex- 
tortion, which in Bunyan's examples is nothing 
more than getting as much as you can for what 
you have to sell, is a sin which excludes from 
the Kingdom of God. He may talk nonsense, 
but he certainly is in accord with his Bible, which 
not only assumes that there is such a thing as 
extortion, but awards the heaviest punishment to 
it. In Ezekiel it is one of the transgressions of 
the '* bloody city," and classed with incest. It is 
included in Saint Paul's list of unnatural and dev- 
ilish sins. A poor body, says Bunyan, lives miles 
from a market, so that it costs him a day's wages 
of eightpence or tenpence to go thither. He asks 
his master or his mistress to let him have at a 
reasonable rate out of their store what he wants 
and they can spare. They give it to him, but 



i6o JOHN BUNYAN 

make him pay " as much or more for it at home 
as they can get when they have carried it five miles 
to a market, yea, and that too for the refuse of 
their commodity. But in this the women are es- 
pecially faulty, in the sale of their butter and 
cheese, etc. Now, this is a kind of extortion: it 
is a making a prey of the necessity of the poor, 
it is a grinding of their faces.'* These last words 
are Isaiah's, and he prophesies that for this crime 
" the Lord will enter into judgment with the an- 
cients of His people, and the princes thereof." 

The hucksters who buy by wholesale and sell 
by retail " after a stinging rate " are also sinners, 
and, once more, it is because the poor man is 
robbed that the guilt is especially great. Then 
there are the usurers and those " vile wretches 
called pawnbrokers," who trade upon helplessness. 
This is rough treatment. Hucksters, usurers, and 
pawnbrokers would not exist If there were no de- 
mand for them ; but again Bunyan might have 
supported himself on his Bible. The man who 
was to abide in the Lord's tabernacle would not 




PJioto Mrs. Delves, Broiighton. 

Bell in the Detached Belfry of Elstow Church. 



"MR. BADMAN" i6i 

be he " who putteth out his money to usury," and 
the usurer " shall gather his substance or him that 
will pity the poor." Mr. Attentive asks why " it 
is not lawful for a man to make the best of his 
own." Mr. Wiseman selects a few out of a mul- 
titude of reasons why he is not justified in so 
doing. They are nearly all Scriptural. If he sells 
as dear as he can he takes advantage of his neigh- 
bour's Ignorance, necessity, or folly. No man is 
to go beyond his brother in any matter. That is 
enough. Bunyan propounds the amazing doctrine 
that " a man in dealing should really design his 
neighbour's good, profit, and advantage as " his 
own," and that if God has given him more under- 
standing than his fellows it should be used for 
their protection. Mr. Attentive correctly replies 
that " were some men to hear you they would 
laugh you to scorn," and that there "is no set- 
tled price set by God upon any commodity." Mr. 
Wiseman seems unable to dispute this point; he 
turns aside from it, but he prays Mr. Attentive 
if corn should rise and he has a stock, not to 



i62 JOHN BUNYAN 

rejoice but to grieve, and " let the poor have a 
pennyworth." Bunyan knew that a time comes 
when we have to clap the extinguisher on dialectics 
and obey a surer guide. Am I to take what I can 
get for the store In my granary if the city Is be- 
sieged and people are living on rats? If my 
neighbour Is In sore need of fifty pounds ought 
I to accept twenty per cent, for It If he Is willing 
to pay it? 

Bunyan's scale of Iniquity was not ours. Van- 
ity Is to him a deadly sin. Badman was proud, 
but when his wife rebuked him he taunted her 
with the pride of her religious companions. Bun- 
yan was evidently alarmed at the departure of 
his friends from simplicity. Women who were 
Church members were " decked and bedaubed 
with f angles and toys." He " once talked with 
a maid by way of reproof for her fond and gaudy 
garment. But she told me ' the tailor would 
make it so ' ; when, alas, poor proud girl, she gave 
order to the tailor so to make It." The children 
of God should be a church, clearly distinguishable 



"MR. BADMAN" 163 

outwardly as well as Inwardly from the world. 
He says that he knows not of any two gross sins 
which stick closer to nature than pride and un- 
cleanness. It is Interesting to notice why he de- 
nounces pride with such fervour. It was because 
it is a sign that self is the centre. The man who 
thinks exclusively of himself cannot pray; he can- 
not hearken to God's word with reverence and 
fear: he has forgotten the great God in His holi- 
ness. If we saw Him before us, we could take 
" little pleasure in apish knacks." Another of 
Badman's sins, " among the foulest villainies 
. . . rotting the very bones of him in whom it 
dwells," was envy. Bunyan quotes Matthew 
xxvli. 18 to show what he means: " For he knew 
that for envy they had delivered Him." It is a 
certain malignant hatred of good, the lowest con- 
ceivable depth of wickedness. Its root is Igno- 
rance. For this we are usually held not to be 
accountable, but to Bunyan, whether we are ac- 
countable or not was not worth debate. It was 
" Ignorance " which preferred Barabbas to Jesus. 



1 64 JOHN BUN Y AN 

Mr. Badman, when he was drunk, tumbled off 
his horse and broke his leg. His conscience smote 
him a little, but became quiet as his leg grew 
better. He fell very sick, and again repented and 
was alarmed, for he thought he was going to die. 
But he recovered and his fright disappeared. 
Bunyan thinks his doctor was much to blame, for 
he persuaded his patient that his fear of hell was 
one of the effects of his distemper and due to " 111 
vapours In the brain.'' His poor wife died, worn 
out with disappointment and cruel treatment. 
After some time he was snared in his drink by a 
very different kind of woman, one who was akin 
to him In all his vices, who would curse him and 
give him blow for blow. They " brought their 
noble to ninepence," he among his companions 
and she among hers, and Badman's evil life at last 
caused him " to moulter away, and he went when 
set a-going rotten to his grave." He did not re- 
pent, and had a quiet end. Badman was drawn 
from life, and Bunyan would not alter the facts 
in order to be more Impressive. He admits that 



"MR. BADMAN** i6-J 

such a death is a " staggering dispensation." But 
although the wicked " go and go, and go on 
peaceably from youth to old age, and thence to 
the grave, and so to hell without noise, they go 
as an ox to the slaughter, and as a fool to the 
correction of the stocks; that is, both senselessly 
and securely. O ! but being come at the gates of 
hell!" 

Bunyan again preaches the Law. Badman was 
lost because he did not reform. Godly ministers 
visited him " even of love to convince him of his 
evil life, that he might have repented and have 
obtained mercy." It is a Law which is directed 
against definite transgressions. Bunyan was not 
afraid to tell his friends at Bedford that if they 
did this or that particular evil deed they would 
be damned. 



THE "HOLY WAR'' 

In 1682 the Holy War was published. Here, 
as In the Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan writes his 
own history and that of all human beings to whom 
life Is more than silly sport. This will be apparent 
without any Interpretation If, as before, we sim- 
ply follow him. Mansoul was a town built by 
Shaddal to be his own dwelling place. It was 
defended by walls in which were five gates, Ear- 
gate, Eyegate, Mouthgate, Nosegate and Feel- 
gate, and In the centre of It was a glorious castle. 
DIabolus was a mighty giant, king of the blacks 
or negroes, who once was a prince In Shaddars 
court. Envious of the honour conferred on Shad- 
dai's son, DIabolus rebelled with a vast number 
of his friends. They were therefore bound In 
chains and cast Into a pit. Without any explana- 
tion we are informed that they obtained freedom 
166 



THE ^'HOLY WAR" 167 

so far that they were enabled to roam about the 
Universe and discover Mansoul. They deter- 
mined to possess it in order to revenge themselves 
on Shaddai. A council of war was held and it 
was resolved that Diabolus should take the form 
of a dragon, a beast which in those days was quite 
familiar, and in this shape obtain entrance to 
Mansoul and betray it. He appeared before the 
town with all his host invisibly attending him and 
made an oration, in which he enlarged on the glory 
of Freedom, and told the inhabitants that they 
would prove themselves slaves if they submitted 
to a prohibition against eating an apple. Sud- 
denly Captain Resistance, an officer indispensable 
to Mansoul's safety, was shot dead. Mr. Ill- 
pause, the orator of Diabolus, stepped forward 
and supported him in a short speech. Before he 
had finished the Lord Innocency also fell dead, 
either from a shot, or qualm, or, as Bunyan thinks 
more probable, overcome by Ill-pause's stinking 
breath. These two being out of the way, Man- 
soul ate the apple, became drunk, and yielded up 



1 68 JOHN BUNYAN 

town and citadel to Diabolus. He remodelled the 
corporation, deposing the Lord Understanding 
from the office of Lord Mayor and also the Re- 
corder, Mr. Conscience, who became nearly but 
never quite reconciled to the usurper and occasion- 
ally thundered at him. My Lord Will-be-Will, 
a very high-born person, who " was as much if 
not more a freeholder than many of them were," 
Diabolus altogether debauched. The Diabolo- 
nian Lord Mayor was my Lord Lustings, and the 
Recorder was Mr. Forgetgood. New burgesses 
and aldermen were also admitted, amongst whom 
were Mr. Incredulity and Mr. Atheism. The 
Bedford Corporation had just surrendered its 
charter to the King, and burgesses had been en- 
rolled whom Bunyan well knew. 

The news of Mansoul's defection was brought 
to Shaddai^s court. The difficulties into which 
the allegory falls at this point will be considered 
later on. It was decreed that an army should be 
sent to rescue Mansoul, but that this first expedi- 
tion should not be under the command of Emman- 



THE "HOLY WAR" 169 

uel but of his servants, Captains Boanerges, Con- 
viction, Judgment and Execution. Their forces 
sat down before Mansoul, and Captain Boanerges 
summoned it to surrender. After some useless at- 
tempts to obtain a hearing. Incredulity, who had 
succeeded Lustings as Mayor, appeared on the 
wall, but Boanerges refused to deliver his message 
to him, and inquired for the old Lord Mayor, 
Lord Understanding. The marginal note is 
" Boanerges refuses to make Incredulity a judge 
of what he had to deliver to the famous town of 
Mansoul." The summons was in vain. By what 
right, asked Incredulity, does Shaddai order you 
to make war upon us? Shaddai's captains would 
not answer, and the siege began. Mansoul was 
much distressed, and Diabolus had his rest broken. 
Conditions were proposed under which Mansoul 
would admit the authority of Emmanuel, but they 
were ridiculous, and at once rejected. Diabolus, 
who apparently had regained his health and cour- 
age, was so satisfied with Incredulity's conduct of 
the negotiations that he promised him the post of 



lyo JOHN BUNYAN 

Universal Deputy, and that all nations should sub- 
mit to him. But Mansoul was not altogether con- 
tent. My Lord Understanding and Mr. Con- 
science, as the marginal note says, " set the soul 
in a hubbub." My Lord Understanding raised 
the cry that neither Incredulity, who as Mayor 
strove to restore order, nor his Prince DIabolus, 
were natives of Mansoul, and there was some- 
thing like a mutiny which was not suppressed with- 
out bloodshed. The captains with their engines 
made many brave attempts to enter Mansoul, but 
were unsuccessful, and entrenched themselves In 
winter quarters. It was then agreed to send a 
letter to the Sovereign confessing partial failure 
and requesting help. Emmanuel offered to head 
another army; his offer was accepted, and pres- 
ently Mansoul was invested. When DIabolus 
saw the preparations for assault he judged it best 
to treat for peace and Mr. Loth-to-stoop was sent 
to Emmanuel. " After a Diabolonlan ceremony 
or two " the envoy delivered his terms. Two are 
particularly worth notice. DIabolus would depart 



THE "HOLY WAR'' 171 

provided that he might, " when he came into this 
country for old acquaintance sake, be entertained 
as a wayfaring man for two days or ten days, or a 
month or so." If this should be denied, he never- 
theless would yield, and would not personally visit 
the town again, " if his friends and kindred in 
Mansoul might have liberty to trade in the town, 
and to enjoy their present dwellings." Mr. Loth- 
to-stoop was sent back with a blank refusal, and 
the attack began. Much execution was done on 
the army of Diabolus, and he tried another parley. 
He came down to the gate one evening ** a good 
while after the sun had gone down," and pro- 
pounded a notable scheme. He would reform if 
Emmanuel would appoint him to be his Viceroy. 
He would then persuade the Mansoulians to re- 
ceive Emmanuel for their Lord, " and I know," 
said he, " that they will do it the sooner when 
they shall understand that I am thy Deputy." He 
would also at his own cost set up a sufficient min- 
istry and lecturers to teach Mansoul the Holy 
Law. Emmanuel, of course, was not to be de- 



172 JOHN BUNYAN 

celved, and took the opportunity of explaining to 
his great Enemy that Mansoul could never, by 
obedience to the Law, redeem Itself from the curse 
which followed a single Infraction of It. So far 
as redemption was concerned, the observance was 
*' just nothing at alW It Is curious what a charm 
this little bit of Calvlnlstic logic had for Bunyan 
and how frequently he repeats It. He must teach 
it to the very Devil. 

The fight was renewed; Eargate was forced and 
DIabolus retreated to the Castle. The Castle 
gate was beaten to splinters, and Emmanuel en- 
tered the town. DIabolus was chained to the 
Prince's chariot-wheels, but for some reason which 
Bunyan does not give his life was spared and he 
was turned out of the camp " to inherit the 
parched places In a salt land, seeking rest, but 
finding none." Four petitions for mercy were 
sent by Mansoul to the Prince, but the answers 
returned were dark and the Mansoulians were 
" struck into their dumps." My Lord Under- 
standing, Mr. Conscience and my Lord Will-be- 



THE "HOLY WAR'' 173 

Will, who had been put in prison, were summoned 
to the camp. They went with ropes round them 
and in fetters. Admitted to Emmanuel's pres- 
ence, they fell on the ground before him. Asked 
whether they were the men who did suffer them- 
selves to be corrupted by Diabolus, they replied, 
" We did more than suffer it, Lord; for we chose 
it of our own mind." Asked again if they did not 
heartily wish that Emmanuel might be defeated, 
the answer was, " Yes, Lord, yes," and they con- 
fessed that they deserved both " death and the 
deep." But " lo ! the music that was in the upper 
region sounded melodiously," and the Prince, 
without a word of reproof, forgave their tres- 
passes, took away their ropes, presented them with 
jewels of gold and precious stones and put chains 
of gold about their necks. Bunyan's description 
of unreserved admission of wrong-doing and in- 
gratitude, and of equally unreserved forgiveness, 
sinking the transgression beyond sight, as the At- 
lantic hides a stone cast into it, is not much below 
the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and the parable 



174 JOHN BUNYAN 

of the prodigal son. " Do they use," cried Man- 
soul, "to show such kind favours to traitors? 
No! this is only peculiar to Shaddai and unto 
Emmanuel His son," and Mansoul was right. 
The Prince entered the town in triumph. Lord 
Understanding again became Lord Mayor; Lord 
Will-be- Will took charge of the gates and the 
militia; Mr. Knowledge was appointed Recorder, 
and old Mr. Conscience, the former Recorder, 
had a place assigned to him of which we shall 
hear further particulars. 

A court was assembled to try the prisoners. 
They were true Diabolonian rascals, Mr. Athe- 
ism, Mr. Pitiless, old Mr. Incredulity and the 
like, but the jury was certainly packed against 
them. The verdict of Mr. Hate-bad, Mr. 
I Heavenly-mind, Mr. Upright and his friends 
might easily have been foreseen. Some of the Dia- 
bolonians denied their names. They were not the 
men they were taken to be. Mr. False-peace de- 
clared he was not False-peace but Peace, and Mr. 
Pitiless that his accusers were totally mistaken, 



THE "HOLY WAR" 175 

for he was really Mr. Cheerup. Others were 
boldly unrepentant. Mr. Haughty it is Impos- 
sible not to respect. He had " always been a man 
of courage and valour, and had not used, when 
under the greatest clouds, to sneak or hang down 
the head like a bulrush." " He did not consider 
who was his foe, nor what the cause was in which 
he was engaged. 'Twas enough for him if he 
carried it bravely, fought like a man and came 
off a victor." All the accused were found guilty 
and were executed, with the exception of old Mr. 
Incredulity, " the very worst of all the gang," 
who escaped, ranged over those " dry places " 
into which Diabolus had been dismissed, and at 
last found his master on Hellgate Hill. 

Emmanuel, as a special favour to Mansoul, 
made one of their townsmen a captain. His name 
was Experience. His colours were white and his 
escutcheon was the dead lion and dead bear. 
" David said. Moreover, the Lord that delivered 
me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw 
of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand 



176 JOHN BUNYAN 

of this Philistine." Bunyan had known Captain 
Experience intimately. He had been specially use- 
ful to him in covering retreat when the battle had 
gone against him, and in night attacks by his 
infernal foes. 

A new constitution was granted to Mansoul. 
The Lord Chief Secretary, that is to say the 
Holy Ghost, was to remain in it, and Mr. Con- 
science, formerly Recorder, was appointed Sub- 
ordinate Preacher. He was to teach the moral 
virtues, civil and natural duties, and to confine 
himself thereto. He was not to consider it his 
office to reveal high and supernatural mysteries. 
These were to be disclosed by the High Secre- 
tary alone. The Subordinate Preacher, as a na- 
tive of Mansoul, was acquainted with the laws 
and customs of the Corporation. The Lord High 
Secretary was a native of another city and knew 
the things thereof and the will of its King. Em- 
manuel told the Subordinate Preacher, " Because 
thou art old and through many abuses made 
feeble; therefore I give thee leave and license to 



THE "HOLY WAR" 177 

go when thou wilt to my fountain, my conduit, 
and there to drink freely of the blood of my 
grape, for my conduit doth always run wine. 
Thus doing, thou shalt drive from thy heart and 
stomach all foul, gross, and hurtful humours. It 
will also lighten thine eyes, and will strengthen 
thy memory for the reception and keeping of all 
that the King's most noble Secretary teacheth." 
Mr. Conscience's health was improvable by celes- 
tial liquor and without it he was a poor creature. 
The Prince warned Mansoul to search out all 
the Diabolonians and put them to death. They 
had hidden themselves in holes in the town-walls 
and a thorough riddance of them could not be 
made unless the walls were pulled down. This 
was forbidden. Mansoul was now regenerate as 
far as it could be while Diabolonian " skulkers " 
continued to live in it; Emmanuel was in the Cas- 
tle, the Mansoulians were clothed by him in white 
robes, which were to be worn daily, but girded up 
from the ground so that they might not " lag 
with dust and dirt." Diabolonian False-peace was 



178 JOHN BUNYAN 

crucified, Mr. God's-peace was appointed Gov- 
ernor of the castle and town and was to be su- 
preme over my Lord Understanding, my Lord 
Will-be-Will, Mr. Conscience, Mr. Mind, over 
every other official and all the citizens. He was 
not a Mansoulian, but came in EmmanueFs train. 
Here the Holy War ought to have ended had 
it been mere invention, but Bunyan did not in- 
vent, and the history of his own Mansoul was not 
finished in this wise. There was a certain half- 
bred Diabolonian in the town, Mr. Carnal-Secur- 
ity. He acquired so much influence in it that it 
cared no longer to communicate with Emmanuel 
who withdrew to the Court. Mr. God's-peace 
also laid down his commission. Before Emman- 
uel went away, being much grieved at the defec- 
tion of Mansoul, he sent the Lord High Secre- 
tary, who it is to be remembered was the Holy 
Ghost, twice thither, and he found Mansoulians 
*' at dinner in Mr. Carnal-Security's parlour." 
They were not willing " to reason about matters 
concerning their good," and therefore he departed 



THE "HOLY WAR" 179 

much grieving. It may be difficult at first to un- 
derstand why Mr. Carnal-Security should have 
played such an important part in the ruin of Man- 
soul. Why not my Lord Lasciviousness, or that 
" horrible villain, the old and dangerous Lord 
Covetousness," who afterwards was one of the 
chief conspirators in the restoration of Diabolus. 
It is not, however, meaningless that Mansoul fell 
by a spiritual and not by a sensual vice, that is 
to say by security in self, independence of the 
visitations and guidance of the Most High. The 
Diabolonians lurking in Mansoul now laid their 
heads together and sent a message to their lord, 
pointing out that the recapture of the town would 
be easy, partly because of Emmanuel's with- 
drawal, and partly by reason of a grievous sick- 
ness which had greatly enfeebled the natives but 
had not touched the true Diabolonians. After 
some debate a singular device was adopted. Cer- 
tain clever Diabolonians changed their names, dis- 
guised themselves in sheep's russet, as white as the 
robes of Mansoul then were, and hired themselves 



i8o JOHN BUNYAN 

as servants in it. The " horrible villain, the old 
and dangerous Lord Covetousness " called himself 
Prudent-Thrifty and was taken by Mr. Mind. 
The corruption of Mansoul went on apace and 
Diabolus enlisted an army of between twenty and 
thirty thousand Doubters as the most capable of 
his subjects to overthrow Mansoul. It was pro- 
posed that the assault should be made on mar- 
ket day. " Take heed, Mansoul," is the marginal 
note to " market day." Old Incredulity was 
made general because there was " none truer than 
he to the Tyrant." There were several kinds of 
Doubters, Election-Doubters, Vocation-Doubters, 
Grace-Doubters, etc.^ The army set out on its 
march and encamped before Mansoul, but the 
plot had been discovered and the fortifications put 

^ ** Figures,*' says Mr. Froude, "now gone to shadow; 
then the deadliest foes of every English Puritan soul." Not 
quite true. The quantity and quality of the deadly stuff 
which to Bunyan was "Election-doubt," "Vocation-doubt," 
** Grace-doubt," remains the same under other forms from age 
to age. 



THE "HOLY WAR" i8i 

in order. The " roaring " of the Diabolonian 
drum was an especial terror to the inhabitants. It 
was generally beaten at nights, and " no noise was 
ever heard upon earth more terrible, except the 
voice of Shaddai when he speaketh." Mansoul 
prayed Emmanuel time after time for assistance, 
but with no effect. Nevertheless it held out 
bravely and exterminated all the Diabolonians on 
whom it could lay hands. Prudent-Thrifty had 
begotten two children, Gripe and Rake-all, on Mr. 
Mind's bastard daughter. Mr. Mind hanged 
them, and the " townsmen took great encourage- 
ment at this act.'' 

Mansoul was victorious in its first battle and 
ventured a night attack, a piece of folly, thinks 
Bunyan, inasmuch as Mansoul was always at its 
worst in the night and Diabolus at his best. Man- 
soul was beaten. Diabolus entered and the 
Doubters swarmed over it, killing every body they 
met, yea " children yet unborn." The marginal 
note is " good and tender thoughts." The castle 
held out, and at last, after " about two years and 



1 82 JOHN BUNYAN 

a half," a gracious answer was received from 
Emmanuel to a petition despatched through the 
Lord High Secretary. Diabolus heard of it and 
called a council of war, whose opinion was that 
it would be good strategy to withdraw a short 
distance outside the walls, and endeavour to in- 
crease the internal weakness in the town. Dia- 
bolonians feigning themselves traders were to 
bring their wares to market and offer them at half 
their worth. Mansoul would be tempted, would 
grow rich, would neglect the castle watch, nay, 
*' might make of their castle a warehouse," and 
by sudden storm it might be taken. But just as 
this " master-piece of hell " had been concocted 
a message came from Emmanuel that on the third 
day at sunrising or dawn he would appear with 
an army in the field and meet the forces of Man- 
soul under Captain Credence. He came; Dia- 
bolus was defeated and most of his army slain, 
but the Princes and Captains and old Incredulity 
escaped. Emmanuel re-entered Mansoul with col- 
ours displayed and trumpets sounding. 



THE "HOLY WAR" 183 

DIabolus determined upon another attempt, 
and his army this time was made up of ten thou- 
sand Doubters and fifteen thousand Bloodmen. 
The Bloodmen were of three sorts : those that did 
ignorantly what they did, those that did super- 
stitiously what they did, and those that " did what 
they did out of spite and implacableness." Man- 
soul was once more besieged, and Emmanuel ap- 
pointed a new Captain, a young man named Self- 
denial, a Mansoulian like Captain Experience. 
The marginal note Is " Captain Self-denial, the 
last of those that were put in office in the town 
of Mansoul." In the great fight on the plain 
Emmanuel was victorious, but some of the Doubt- 
ters were not captured. Those of the Bloodmen 
who were taken and asked for mercy were par- 
doned; those who were unrepentant were bound 
over to answer at " the great and general assizes 
of the Universe." 

Strict search was made for concealed Diabo- 
lonians. One of them, Evil-questioning, was " a 
very great enemy to Mansoul and a great doer 



1 84 JOHN BUNYAN 

among the DIabolonlans there." He harboured 
Doubters. He was arrested, but at his trial, like 
some of his predecessors, denied his name and 
protested he was Mr. Honest-inquiry. The evi- 
dence proved that he was really Evil-questioning, 
not Honest-inquiry, and he was crucified with the 
guests he had entertained. Carnal-sense also was 
apprehended, but " brake prison and made his es- 
cape; yea, and the bold villain will not yet quit 
the town, but lurks in the Diabolonian dens 
a-days, and haunts, like a ghost, honest men's 
houses a-nights." Neither could Mr. Unbelief 
be captured. He was a " nimble jack," and con- 
trived to dwell in Mansoul till it ceased to remain 
in the Universe. With a speech from Emman- 
uel warning Mansoul to be watchful — " hold fast 
till I come " — the Holy War ends. 

It is impossible to assign any time within which 
the Holy War is included if we consider it as a 
connected allegory. When Diabolus first ap- 
peared before Mansoul he pointed to the Tree of 
Knowledge of Good and Evil, and strove to in- 



THE "HOLY WAR" 185 

duce Mansoul to eat. Captain Resistance and 
my Lord Innocence being dead, Mansoul yielded. 
Emmanuel, In his reply to DIabolus when he Is 
master of the town, says, " Wherefore, when 
Mansoul had sinned Indeed by hearkening to thy 
He, I put In and became a surety to my Father, 
body for body, and soul for soul, that I would 
make amends for Mansoul's transgressions; and 
my Father did accept thereof. So, when the time 
appointed was come, I gave body for body, soul 
for soul, life for life, blood for blood, and so 
redeemed my beloved Mansoul." Again, when 
Emmanuel finally left Mansoul — " I have also, 
that all things that might hinder thy way to the 
pleasures of Paradise might be taken out of the 
way, laid down for thee, for thy soul, a pkn-^^- 
satisfaction, and have bought thee to myself; a 
price not of corruptible things, as of silver and 
gold, but a price of blood, mine own blood, which 
I have freely spilled upon the ground to make 
thee mine. . . . O my Mansoul, I have lived, I 
have died. I live and will die no more for thee. 



1 86 JOHN BUNYAN 

I live, that thou mayest not die. Because I live, 
thou shalt live also. I reconciled thee to my 
Father by the blood of my cross, and being recon- 
ciled thou shalt live through me." But in the 
Holy War we see nothing of the Incarnation, Cru- 
cifixion and Ascension. There is in fact no unity 
of time or action in it, and we must consider it 
simply as a series of pictures representing strug- 
gles which may take place in the soul, and did 
especially take place in the soul of Bunyan. The 
poem To the Reader ^ is precise on this point. 

For my part, I (myself) was in the town, 
Both when 'twas set up and when pulling down. 
I saw Diabolus in his possession, 
And Mansoul also under his oppression, 
Yea, I was there when she own'd him for Lord, 
And to him did submit with one accord. 

Let no men, then, count me a fable-maker, 
Nor make my name or credit a partaker 
Of their derision : what is here in view. 
Of mine own knowledge, I dare say is true. 



THE "HOLY WAR" 187 

I saw the Prince's armed men come down 
By troops, by thousands, to besiege the town ; 
I saw the Captains, heard the trumpets sound. 
And how his forces covered all the ground. 
Yea, how they set themselves in battle 'ray 
I shall remember to my dying day. 

There are many obvious defects In the Holy 
War besides lack of unity; more even than in 
the second part of the Pilgrim's Progress. We 
find In it no such flesh-and-blood creatures as Mr. 
Fearing and Mr. Talkative. There is no neces- 
sity in many of the details. When Mansoul is 
besieged by Boanerges and his captains one shot 
kills six of the aldermen, namely Messrs. Swear- 
ing, Whoring, Fury, Stand-to-lies, Drunkenness 
and Cheating. It Is difficult to see why these six 
In particular should have been slain, and they 
surely must soon have risen from the dead. Em- 
manuePs captains In his first expedition are Cre- 
dence, Goodhope, Charity, Innocence, and Pa- 
tience. The appointment of the first three Is 
comprehensible, but what claims have the last two 



1 88 JOHN BUN Y AN 

above other Christian virtues? Why also should 
Captain Innocency be quartered with Mr. Rea- 
son and Captain Patience with Mr. Mind? The 
characters, if there are any, overlap in every di- 
rection. Lord Will-be-Will, who is such an inde- 
finable entity in metaphysics, is much more 
indefinite in Mansoul. Mr. Mind is his lieuten- 
ant. Diabolus and his legions are driven into 
horrible pits and bound with chains, but they 
break loose, and from their talk and behaviour 
we should never conjecture that they were ever- 
lastingly tortured in brimstone fire. Diabolus 
finishes a letter to his friends in Mansoul by wish- 
ing they may be " as hellishly prosperous as we 
desire to be ourselves," and Deadman's bell is 
rung " for joy " on receipt of a message from 
Mansoul inviting Diabolus to return. Inconsis- 
tency of this latter kind is also to be found in 
Paradise Lost. Milton and Bunyan are both 
compelled to modify the dreadful sentence before 
they can move. 

Emmanuel at the close retires to his distant 



THE "HOLY WAR" 189 

court, but having Inhabited Mansoul and finally 
recovered it from Diabolus, he ought not to 
leave. He tries to explain to Mansoul why so 
many Diabolonians after his departure are suf- 
fered to remain in it. Their stay is permitted 
to keep Mansoul awake, to try its love, to cause 
it to prize Emmanuel's captains and officers, and 
to remind it of the deplorable condition in which 
it once was. Mansoul might have replied with 
some justice that it would rather dispense with 
this training, and that the simpler plan would be 
to exterminate the Diabolonians. Stranger still 
they are to live, because, " O my Mansoul, should 
I slay all them within, many there be without that 
would bring thee into bondage ; for were all these 
within cut off, those without would find thee sleep- 
ing, and then, as in a moment, they would swallow 
up my Mansoul. I therefore left them in thee, 
not to do thee hurt (the which they yet will, if 
thou hearken to them and serve them), but to 
do thee good, the which they must, if thou watch 
and fight against them." Usually Bunyan gives 



I90 JOHN BUNYAN 

us his own and consequently our experience, but 
this passage is almost unintelligible. By conflict 
with our evil passions we are to be saved from 
the devils of the pit far away ! Bunyan, in much 
perplexity, and resolved not to give up his belief 
that God does everything for the best, is driven 
to forced and foreign explanation. Yet he is not 
wholly wrong, for he saw that although Mansoul 
might be governed by the Lord High Secretary, 
Diabolonians could not be completely destroyed. 
He is unable to hit upon the true reason, but he 
acknowledges the fact. We cannot expect him 
to tell us that, without some admixture of Dia- 
bolonians, Mansoul could not exist, and that Mr. 
Belief, Mr. Hate-bad, and the rest of the jury 
who tried them, must have been related to them, 
and have inherited some advantages from a par- 
tially Diabolonian ancestry. 

But although the Holy War may have many 
faults it is nevertheless wonderful. There is much 
humour in it. One of the great doers in Mansoul, 
whom Diabolus addresses as " his darling,'' was 



THE *^HOLY WAR" 191 

Captain Anything. He was put In ward at last 
and reserved for crucifixion. After Emmanuel 
had subdued the first revolt and Mansoul was In 
terrible suspense, not knowing what treatment It 
would receive at the hands of the Prince — " O ! 
how the Busy-bodies that were In the town of 
Mansoul did now concern themselves I They did 
run here and there through the streets of the 
town by companies, crying out as they ran In 
tumultuous wise, one after one manner and an- 
other quite the contrary, to the almost utter dis- 
traction of Mansoul." My Lord WUl-be-WUl 
when he was mutinous made '^ one old Prejudice, 
an angry and ill-conditioned fellow," Captain of 
the Ward at Eargate, and put under his power 
sixty men, called Deaf-men, " advantageous for 
that service, forasmuch as they mattered no words 
of the captains nor of the soldiers." Emmanuel's 
captains as they went to Mansoul, crossing over 
the country happened to light upon three young 
fellows : proper men they were, and men of cour- 
age and skill, " to appearance." Their names 



192 JOHN BUNYAN 

were Mr. Tradition, Mr. Human-wisdom, and 
Mr. Man's-invention. The captains rather 
doubted them, but as they professed they had 
come on purpose to meet their Excellencies they 
were listed. They were taken prisoners almost 
immediately, and when they were brought before 
Diabolus, offered to serve him, for they were sol- 
diers of fortune. He handed them over to Cap- 
tain Anything. " Nor know I better," he said, 
" to whose conduct to commit them than to 
thine." Captain Anything appointed Mr. Tradi- 
tion and Mr. Human-wisdom to be sergeants 
and Mr. Man's-invention to be his Ancient- 
bearer. 

There Is no such conception even In the Pil- 
grimes Progress as that of the town of Mansoul, 
with its treasons and its passionate repentance, in- 
habited by damnable scoundrels. Whoring, Stand- 
to-lies, and Drunkenness, but also by Godly-fear, 
my Lord Understanding, Conscience, Self-denial, 
and for some time, by Emmanuel himself. The 
best and the worst, as we have seen, are Importa- 



THE "HOLY WAR" 193 

tions from Heaven and Hell. For Mansoul God 
and the Devil go to war. The description of the 
last battle but one is most dramatic. The Dla- 
bolonian host, as we remember, had encamped out- 
side the town, and Captain Credence had received 
the letter from Emmanuel in which he said that 
upon the third day he would meet him in the 
field in the plains about Mansoul. Not even 
Credence knew what this letter meant, and he took 
it to the Lord High Secretary, who had been fully 
Informed of the policy of the Diabolonian lead- 
ers. The Lord High Secretary read it, and as- 
sured him that on the third day " yea, by that it 
is break of day, sunrising, or before," Emmanuel 
would appear, and that the Diabolonian army, en- 
closed between his forces in front and Credence's 
behind, should be destroyed. Credence com- 
manded that all the King's trumpeters should as- 
cend to the battlements of the castle and " make 
the best music that heart could invent," whereat 
" Diabolus did start." He had planted himself 
before Eyegate in terrible array. The hour be- 



194 JOHN BUNYAN 

ing come, before it was light Credence drew out 
his forces by the sally-port of the town, and fell 
upon the enemy. After sharp fighting they gave 
way, but rallied again, and Credence's soldiers be- 
gan to faint. No Emmanuel had as yet appeared. 
Credence did not despair, but in a brave speech 
called for another charge. His men drew them- 
selves together, and attacked fiercely, but it was 
an hour before they were relieved. Just as they 
were well-nigh spent, ''behold, Emmanuel came; 
and he came with colours flying, trumpets sound- 
ing; and the feet of his men scarce touched the 
ground, they hasted with that celerity towards the 
captains that were engaged. Then did Credence 
wind with his men to the townward, and gave 
to Diabolus the field: so Emmanuel came upon 
him on the one side, and the enemy's place was 
betwixt them both. Then again they fell to it 
afresh; and now it was but a little while more 
but Emmanuel and Captain Credence met, still 
trampling down the slain as they came." Had 
Bunyan read Paradise Lost? 



THE "HOLY WAR" 195 

Attended with ten thousand thousand saints, 
He onward came, far ofF his coming shone. 

Under whose conduct Michael soon reducM 
His army, circumfus'd on either wing, 
Under their Head imbodied all in one. 

Full soon 

Among them he arriv'd, in his right hand 
Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he sent 
Before him, such as in their souls infix'd 
Plagues ; they astonisht, all resistance lost. 
All courage ; down their idle weapons dropp'd ; 
O'er shields and helms, and helmed heads he rode, 
Of Thrones and mighty seraphim prostrate. 

Bunyan's theme is that which he has handled 
in the duel between Christian and Apollyon in 
the Valley of Humiliation and in the conflict with 
the demons in the Valley of the Shadow — faith 
even when we are prostrate and the enemy stands 
over us, resistance to the uttermost, and then — 
the voice of the silver trumpets and the trampling 
of the slain. If Bunyan can be summed up. It 



196 JOHN BUN Y AN 

Is In the note of those trumpets. It Is the note 
which we always hear from the greatest of the 
sons of men. After the last battle but one was 
over It was deemed to be particularly Important 
that the dead Doubters should be burled, lest their 
corpses should Infect the air. Not " a skull or 
a bone, or a piece of a bone was left . . . above 
ground anywhere near the Corporation . . . and 
so they cleansed the plains." Bunyan thought 
that even when the Doubters were killed their 
" fumes and 111 savours " were murderous. In 
Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ we have a 
minute description of them under the name of 
unbelief. It Is the white devil, for It Is the sin 
" that, above all others, hath some show of rea- 
son In Its attempts." It Is the devil who prevents 
reliance on the promises, who bids the soul to be 
wise, wary, considerate, well-advised, and to take 
heed of too rash a venture upon believing " ; . . . 
who counsels you " when you can neither see nor 
feel, then fear and mistrust, then doubt and ques- 
tion all." . . . who says " How can these things 



THE *'HOLY WAR'* 197 

he? " This is the devil who " sees no form, 
beauty, or comeliness in Christ." No wonder 
that weapons, armour, colours were dug deep 
into the earth by the Overseers " and what else 
soever they could find that did but smell of a 
Diabolonian Doubter. 



SOME REFLECTIONS ON BUNYAN 
AND ON PURITANISM 

Literary people have not had much to say 
about Bunyan, and what little they have said is 
often contemptuous. Going back to the time of 
Addison, the Whig Examiner (No. 2) " never yet 
knew an author that had not his admirers. Bun- 
yan and Quarks have passed through several edi- 
tions and please as many readers as Dryden and 
Tillotson." This number of the Examiner was 
formerly attributed to Addison himself, but is 
now supposed not to be his. There is no doubt, 
however, that it was representative, and that the 
eighteenth century preferred such a passage as the 
following, for example, from one of Tillotson's 
sermons to the description of the Valley of the 
Shadow. *' There is one Supreme Being, the au- 
thor and cause of all things, whom the most 
198 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 199 

ancient of the heathen poets commonly called the 
father of gods and man. And thus Aristotle In 
his metaphyslcks defines God, the eternal and 
most excellent, or best of all living beings. And 
this notion of one Supreme Being agrees very well 
with that exact harmony which appears In the 
frame and government of the world. In which 
we see all things conspiring to one end," etc. etc. 
The sentences slip down like oil; we are not un- 
comfortably agitated. Intellectually or emotion- 
ally, and the allusion to Aristotle flatters us. 
Whether there Is an *' exact harmony '" In the 
world we do not stop to Inquire. Bunyan certainly 
would not have admitted It. 

The great Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, leader 
of taste, who wrote the Essay on the Writings and 
Genius of Shakespeare compared with the Greek 
and French dramatic poets, and who, to use her 
own words, " never Invited idiots to her house," 
the friend of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Cowper, 
a fair sample of the highest breeding, dismisses 
Bunyan as one of '' those classics of the artificers 



200 JOHN BUNYAN 

In leather." ^ Burke says, " The admirer of Don 
Belianis perhaps does not understand the refined 
language of the Mne'idy who If It was degraded 
Into the style of The Pilgrim^ s Progress might feel 
It In all Its energy on the same principle which 
made him an admirer of Don Belianis." ^ Cow- 
per's well-known lines In the Tirocinium are little 
better than patronage and show no real apprecia- 
tion of Bunyan's genius. 

Ingenious dreamer . 

I name thee not, lest so despised a name 
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame. 

Coming to the nineteenth century, Dunlop ad- 
judges " the sentiments of Christian " to be " nar- 
row and Illiberal, and his struggles and exertions 
wholly selfish ... as the author was lUIterate, 
his taste Is coarse and Inelegant." ^ The Penny 

1 Letter to Benjamin Stillingfleet (Lexers of Mrs. Montagu, 
iv. 78). 

2 Sublime and Beautiful, p. 24, edn. 1798. Don Belianis, 
it will be remembered, was in Don Quixote's library. 

8 Dunlop' s History of Ficti'on, ii. 293, edn. 1888. 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 201 

Cyclopedia " confesses " — that "to us The Pil- 
grim^s Progress appears to be a coarse allegory 
. . . mean, jejune and wearisome." ^ 

It Is true there were exceptions even In the days 
of Addison and Mrs. Montagu. Swift had " been 
better entertained, and more Informed, by a few 
pages in The Pilgrim's Progress^ than by a long 
discourse upon the will and Intellect, and simple 
or complex Ideas." ^ Boswell records that Dr. 
Johnson praised Bunyan highly. " His Pilgrim's 
Progress has great merit, both for invention, im- 
agination, and the conduct of the story." ^ Talk- 
ing about a tragedy somebody had brought him, 
he said to Mrs. Thrale, " I looked at nothing but 
the dramatis persona and there was Tigranes and 
Tirldates or Terebazus or such stuff. A man can 
but tell what he knows, and I never got any 
further than the first page. Alas, Madam! how 
few books are there of which one ever can possibly 

^ Vol. vi., edn. 1836. 

"^ A Letter to a Toung Clergyman. Swift's Works y viii. 215, 
edn. 1883. 

^Life, ii. 238, Birkbeck Hill's edn. 1887. 



202 JOHN BUNYAN 

arrive at the last page! Was there ever yet any- 
thing written by mere man that was wished longer 

ii by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson 

\ Crusoe, and The Pilgrim's Progress? " ^ 

The first scholar, however, who really studied 
Bunyan's works was Southey. His Life prefixed 
to his edition of The Pilgrim's Progress is a good 
specimen of his mastery in the art of arranging 
materials, of his lucid style and of the honesty of 
his labours. There is not much direct criticism in 
the Life, but the selection of illustrative passages 
from the Grace Abounding shows that Southey 
had qualities which enabled him, partially at least, 
to understand it. " Thoughts that breathe and 

\ words that burn ... a passion in which the 
reader so far participates as to be disturbed and 
distressed by it," is Southey 's comment and marks 
an advance. It is all the more noteworthy be- 
cause Southey was a High Churchman. It is to 

\ Southey also that we owe the acute remark that 
\ Bunyan being so imaginative himself does not tax 
Miscellanies y i. 332, Birkbeck Hill's edn. 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 203 

the Imagination. He saw the things of which he 
was writing. Macaulay in his review of Southey 
goes beyond him in his praise. " This is the 
highest miracle of genius, that things which are 
not should be as though they were, that the im- 
aginations of one mind should become the per- 1 
sonal recollections of another. And this miracle 
the tinker has wrought." He also observes with 
fine perception that " a dialogue between two 
qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect 
than a dialogue between two human beings in most 
plays," and he scoffs at '^ our refined forefathers " 
who considered Lord Roscommon's Essay on 
Translated Verse and the Duke of Buckingham- 
shire's Essay on Poetry to be " compositions infi- 
nitely superior to those of the travelling tinker." 
For Macaulay, " during the latter part of the 
seventeenth century, there were only two minds 
which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very 
eminent degree. One of those minds produced 
the Paradise Lost, the other The Pilgrim's 
Progress.'' 



204 JOHN BUNYAN 

Although Swift, Johnson, Sou they and Macau- 
lay admu-ed Bunyan, the educated classes did not 
apprehend his real meaning and neglected him 
until Mr. Froude wrote his Essay on him In 
English Men of Letters. Mr. Froude, although 
he is inaccurate, may claim to have been the first 
person who saw clearly the eternal element in Bun- 
yan, and that he does not belong to a sect but to 
the world. It was Mr. Froude also who pointed 
out that Puritanism, even In the apparently nar- 
row form in which it appears In Bunyan, is an 
intense expression of Catholic doctrine and that 
Its roots are deep in the nature of man. At one 
point Bunyan's biographer and critic is inconsis- 
tent. He tells us that Puritanism in the seven- 
teenth century was " admitted, not only by the 
intellect, but accepted and realized by the im- 
agination, '' and that " every step In Christian's 
journey had been first trodden by Bunyan himself; 
every pang of fear and shame, every spasm of 
despair, every breath of hope and consolation, 
which is there described, is but a reflection as on a 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 205 

mirror from personal experience," and yet he 
seems to deny that Puritanism was really vital 
when The Pilgrim^ s Progress was written. " To 
represent Christ as the eternal Son in heaven, to 
bring before us the Persons of the Trinity con- 
sulting, planning and reasoning . . . will be pos- 
sible only when Christianity ceases to be regarded 
as a history of true facts. . . . The PilgrMs 
Progress was composed exactly at the time when 
It was possible for such a book to come Into being : 
the close of the period when the Puritan formula 
was a real belief, and was about to change from 
a living principle into an Intellectual opinion. So 
long as a religion is fully alive, men do not talk 
about It or make allegories about It." To which 
we may reply that if Dante, Milton and Bunyan \ 
did not believe their religion It would be difficult 
to find anybody who did believe. It does not dis- 
prove the reality of Bunyan's temptation that he 
represented it as a struggle with a fishy-scaled 
monster. The articles of his creed required a 
concrete expression. Religion is dead when the 



2o6 JOHN BUNYAN 

i^ imagination deserts it. When it is alive abstrac- 
tions become visible and walk about on the roads. 
It certainly is difficult for us to understand how 
Bunyan, looking up to the stars on a clear night, 
could be sure that behind them certain transac- 
tions had gone on and were going on which he 
describes in Emmanuel's speech to Diabolus, and 
yet he was actually as sure as he was of the earth 
he trod. He was not the less sure because he was 
afflicted with doubt. Christian doubted even to 
the last and was hard put to it just before he 
" found ground under the gates of heaven." The 
Pilgrim^ s Progress so far from arguing decay has 
created vitality. The relief from the Burden at 
the sight of the Cross, the defeat of the Enemy in 
the Valley of Humiliation, the passage through the 
Valley of the Shadow and across the River have 
strengthened the faith of millions when the pre- 

\ cepts and dogmas would have been of little use. 
It is a test of religion that genius is not only 
able to live with it but is necessarily transformed 
by It. Dante owes so much to Christianity that 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM aoy 

we cannot distinguish the contribution from orig- 
inal endowment. It gave him the Cross on which 
" Christ was flashing " for which he could find 
*' no meet similitude " and the melody, *' Arise 
and conquer." To Christianity Bunyan owes, 
amongst other inestimable treasures, Christ as his 
great High Priest and Helper. " It is true, 
temptations and infirmities, strictly considered, are 
none of our nature, no more are they of His; but 
yet, if it be proper to say temptations and afflic- 
tions have a nature. His and ours were naturally 
the same; and that in all points too; for so says 
the text, ' He was tempted in all points like as 
we are, yet without sin.' Are we tempted to dis- 
trust God? so was He: are we tempted to mur- 
der ourselves? so was He: are we tempted with 
the bewitching vanities of this world? so was He. 
So that herein we also were alike; yea, from His 
cradle to His cross He was a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with griefs, a man of affliction through- 
out the whole course of His life." ^ So profound 
J The Sainfs Frivilege and Profit, 



ao8 JOHN BUNYAN 

In fact was the Influence of Christianity on Bun- 
yan that without It he Is not conceivable. The 
effect of religion In those for whom It Is alive Is 
the same as it was for him. It increases the value 
of the whole man; It deepens love, It exalts the 
stature, and adds force to every faculty. When 
it ceases to make us wiser and more passionate, 
when it does not confer greatness, it is a mere 
accretion. 

Mr. Froude does not. It need hardly be said, 
follow " the fashion to dwell on the disadvan- 
tages of Bunyan's education, and to regret the 
carelessness of nature which brought Into exis- 
tence a man of genius in a tinker's hut at Els- 
tow," although even he cannot refrain from quali- 
fying his admiration a little by a hint that Bun- 
yan does not belong to the best society. He 
Is the " poet-apostle of the English middle-classes 
imperfectly educated like himself." Bunyan had 
to work with his own hands for his bread, but 
his humble origin and occupation are not the real 
reason why superior people, although they are 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 209 

willing to grant that he has genius, have never- 
theless decided that he Is tainted with vulgarity, 
something worse almost than a crime to English 
respectability. Other great writers have been born 
low down and have known neither Greek nor 
Latin, but they are not condemned as vulgar. The 
real reason for the charge Is that Bunyan was a / 
Nonconformist. The Inseparable association of 
nonconformity with vulgarity, and of gentility 
with the church Is a curious characteristic of the 
English " Imperfectly educated " people, but can- 
not be discussed here. It Is not true, however, that 
Bunyan was not well educated, nor was he a Dis- j 
senter In the sense that he cared much about ^ 
Dissent. He knew how to write his mother 
tongue with purity and force. This Is an accom- i 
pllshment which even a university does not al- 1 
ways impart. Properly speaking he has no style, 
that is to say nothing comes between us and the 
thing which was in his mind; the glass is not col- 
oured. Although he was not technically a poet 
his prose is distinguished by a quality of the best { 



2IO JOHN BUNYAN 

poetry. The word which goes straight to the 
mark is used, evidently without any search for it. 
We never find in him any of those dead phrases 
which the best authors nowadays cannot avoid, so 
tyrannical is the power of cheap and easy litera- 
ture. To attempt to imitate Bunyan would be 
foolish, but we may learn from him to speak sim- 
ply and not mechanically. As already noticed at 
the beginning of this essay, he wrote such won- 
derful English mainly because he read little in 
comparison with his Bible. Another and greater 
advantage derived from the narrowness of his 
studies was that he did not scatter and waste him- 
self. It gave him character, and armed him at 
every point in every encounter. The Bible sup- 
plied him with those sure maxims, certa vita dog- 
mata, which Spinoza advises us to commit to mem- 
ory, and " constantly to apply to the particular 
cases which frequently meet us in life." This is 
the art of living, the only education of much ac- 
count. Saint Francis of Assisi directs his disciples 
that their aim in their studies is to be not that 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 211 

they may know what to say, but that they may act. 
'* Qu'ils n'etudlent pas, pour apprendre ce qu'on 
doit dire, mais pour pratiquer les premiers ce qu'ils 
auront appris." ^ We read, even the best of us 
nowadays, in order that we may gain ideas, that 
we may " cultivate the mind." We do not read 
that we may strengthen the will or become more "^ 
temperate, courageous or generous. The intellect 
undoubtedly has its claims, but notions have be- 
come idols. It is easier to get notions than to *^ 
practise self-denial. 

Bunyan, we say. Is not a Dissenter In the sense 
that he is much taken up with dissenting. He is 
an Assenter, or Assertor. Religion is the vital 
air he breathes, and religion Is affirmative. He Is 
the poet of Puritanism, but also of something 
greater, that is to say, of a certain class of experi- 
ences, incident not especially to the theologian, 
artist, or philosopher, but to our common nature. 
He was enabled to become their poet because, al- ^ 

1 Le Monnier. Histoire de Saint Francois d^ Assisi, Tome 
ii, edn. 1890, p. 79. 



212 JOHN BUN Y AN 

though he was shaken to the centre by them, he 
could by Grace abounding detach himself from 
them and survey them. This Is his greatest ser- 
vice to us. He takes us by the hand and whispers 
to us, Is it thus and thus with thee? and then he 
tells us he has gone through It all and by God's 
mercy has survived. 

What Is the meaning of Puritanism? Mr. 
Matthew Arnold affirms that " our Puritan 
churches came Into existence for the very sake 
of predestlnarlan and sollfidlan dogmas," and that 
'* the Puritans are, and always have been, deficient 
in the specially Christian sort of righteousness." 
More amazing still, Paul's righteousness before 
his conversion *' was, after all, in Its main fea- 
tures, Puritan," and Puritan theology " could 
have proceeded from no one but the born Anglo- 
Saxon man of business, British or American." ^ 

^ St. Paul and Protestantism, pp. xv., xvii., 57, 81, edn. 
1870. There is not perhaps anywhere to be found such a 
failure to discern the meaning of history as that of Mr. Arnold 
in deahng with Puritanism and Protestantism generally. It is 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 213 

It is needless to dwell upon the folly of this wild 
talk. We have seen what was the theological 
form of Puritanism, and that it was not due, as 
Mr. Arnold supposes, to mere speculation. 
Heaven, hell and the Atonement were the results 
of the conception that there is a generic, ' eternal 
and profoundly important distinction between ^ 
right and wrong. It is because right is so right 
that there is a heaven and it is because wrong is 
so wrong that there is a hell. God Himself be- 
came man to conquer sin. " All this ado is," says 
the Saint's Privilege and Profit, '' that men might 
be saved from sin! What a devil then is sin! 
it Is the worst of devils; it is worse than all >/ 
devils; those that are devils, sin hath made them 
so." Puritanism strove more earnestly than any 
other religion to reform men and to save them 
from sin. This is remarkable, seeing that predes- 
tination was so firmly held. Why should we be- 
stir ourselves if it be true that we cannot alter 

to his Culture and Anarchy that we owe the celebrated inclusion 
of the whole of Luther in the phrase a Philistine of genius. 



214 JOHN BUNYAN 

what Is ordained? And yet Bunyan was never for 
a moment held back In his efforts to turn the 
wicked from their evil ways by his theory that 
God had judged them from eternity. He knew, 
although not explicitly, that we must accept both 
the reasoning and the Impulse to Interfere and 
must not trouble ourselves with their apparent 
contradiction. Even In the opening articles of 
the Puritan creed as we find them In the Doctrine 
of Law and Grace Unfolded, those which Mr. 
Arnold would consider entirely constructive and 
artificial, we discover something which Is not va- 
cant system without Interest. They are based 
upon the Idea of a Just God, and how was It that 
men were compelled to think that God must pun- 
ish the transgressor? God Is easily conceived as 
Strength, but Justice must have been assigned to 
Him because of Its own authority and by no Induc- 
tion from external facts. Surely, If we look at It 
closely, this, so far from being " British or Ameri- 
can business," Is celestial miracle. 

Puritanism insisted on our responsibility to 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 215 

God. When we lie, we break, not a human con- 
vention, but a divine ordinance imposed on us. 
Puritanism becomes a religion more particularly 
in this idea of responsibility. The first meaning 
of religio in the dictionary is fear of God. The 
Puritan feared God as the Judge of the trans- 
gressor. The dread, natural to man of force su- 
perior to him was transformed into the dread of 
disobedience to a moral lawgiver, and the rules 
of life were held to be copies of the pattern on 
the sacred Mount. They were invested with awe, 
and to restore that awe is now the problem for 
us. Kant, in a passage often quoted but only in 
part from the Critique of Practical Reason^ and 
therefore not seldom misunderstood, says, " Two 
things fill the mind with ever new and increasing 
admiration and awe, the oftener and the more 
steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens 
above and the moral law within. I have not to 
search for them and conjecture them as though 
they were veiled in darkness or were In the trans- 
cendent region beyond my horizon; I see them 



21 6 JOHN BUNYAN 

before me and connect them directly with the con- 
sciousness of my existence. The former begins 
from the place I occupy in the external world of 
sense, and enlarges my connexion therein to an un- 
bounded extent with worlds upon worlds and sys- 
tems of systems, and moreover into limitless times 
of their periodic motion, its beginning and continu- 
ance. The second begins from my invisible self, 
my personality, and exhibits me in a world which 
has true infinity, but which is traceable only by 
the understanding, and with which I discern that 
I am not in a merely contingent, but in a universal 
and necessary connexion, as I am also thereby 
with all those visible worlds. The former view 
of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as 
it were my importance as an animal creature^ 
which, after it has been for a short time provided 
with vital power, one knows not how, must again 
give back the matter of which it was formed to 
the planet It inhabits (a mere speck in the uni- 
verse). The second, on the contrary. Infinitely 
elevates my worth as an intelligence by my person- 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 217 

ality, in which the moral law reveals to me a 
life independent on animality and even on the 
whole sensible world, at least so far as may be 
inferred from the destination assigned to my ex- 
istence by this law, a destination not restricted to 
conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into 
the infinite." ^ Kant has regained that reverence 
which the Puritan felt for something supernatural. 
It is the necessary connexion of the infinite with 
ourselves that fills him with " admiration and 
awe." Bunyan goes beyond Kant and lays an 
additional and even deeper foundation stone for 
righteousness. A man departs from iniquity be- 
cause " faith apprehendeth the truth of the being 
and greatness of God and so it aweth the spirit of 
a man. It apprehendeth the love of this God in 
Christ, and so it conquereth and overcometh the 
spirit of a man. It apprehendeth the sweetness 
and blessedness of the nature of the Godhead, and 
hence persuadeth the soul to desire here commun- 

1 Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, Translated by 
Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, B.D., p. 260. 



21 8 JOHN BUNYAN 

ion with Him, that it may be holy, and the enjoy- 
ment of Him when this world is ended that it may 
be happy in and by Him for ever." ^ " To see 
Jesus Christ, then, to see Him as He is, to see 
Him as He is in glory is a sight that is worth 
going from relations, and out of the body, and 
through the jaws of death to see." ^ 

It is of course indisputable that insistence on 
the difference between right and wrong and on 
the doctrine of responsibility is simple Christian- 
ity common to all the churches, but Puritanism 
dwelt on these truths. Reformations do not 
create; they do but re-establish that which is 
nearly effaced. Puritanism accomplished its task 
with as much success as is usually granted to any 
great inspiration. Whatever sweetness there may 
be in England at the present moment is largely 
due to it. Adulterers, drunkards and liars came 
to the top in the reign of Charles the Second, and 
the mob was what the mob has always been, but 

^ A Holy Life the Beauty of Christianity. 
2 The Desire of the Righteous Granted, 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 219 

the soul of Puritanism survived, happily for all 
of us. 

Cant is a telling accusation against Puritan- 
ism. Cant differs In degree. The question is, not 
whether we cant, but how much. There may be 
a soul of honesty in our belief, although a thick 
husk of cant envelops it. If the blood did not 
reach to the extremity of the Puritan's creed, it 
went a long way. He, no doubt, was guilty of 
cant. It follows all great movements, religious 
or secular, and their apostles become tainted with 
it. They are obliged to go on, to define and or- 
ganize : they unfurl a flag, enlist disciples, phrases 
are caught up, and cant begins. Cant ! the charge 
Is not one which the twentieth century should pre- 
fer. Is there no cant when we gabble the Lit- 
any at such a rate that the words are not divided 
and the curate Is half a sentence ahead of his 
congregation ? Is not society a mass of cant ? Do 
not the people cant who " entertain " and are 
" entertained " and repeat as their own thought 
the leading article of a newspaper? Strange that 



aao JOHN BUNYAN 

we should be sunk in cant, and that nevertheless 
we should profess such repulsion from it in Puri- 
tanism. A characteristic form of modern, re- 
spectable cant, worse perhaps than the hypocrisy 
of Tartuffe or Chadband, is our excuse when we 
flinch from the fact. Everywhere, in science, mor- 
als and religion, new fact is thrusting itself upon 
us. We know it is there, we see it, but we soothe 
ourselves by conjecturing that our eyes may be 
deceived; we hurry past, we say It was not there, 
idiotic cowards that we are, and we leave it to rise 
and avenge itself upon us with severity increased 
by each moment of neglect. It does not so much 
matter whether we have correct opinions, but it 
does very much matter that what we believe to 
be correct should be acknowledged. One of the 
countless evils which follow if we do not acknowl- 
edge it is that we become mock-earnest about 
things of no consequence. As far as Bunyan knew 
he spoke, and his emphasis was in the right place. 
Although the Puritan's religion was a religion 
of right doing and not an idle intellectual exercise, 



JOHN BUNYAN AND PURITANISM 221 

he thought it was of the greatest importance that 
we should have true notions about the being of 
God. During the last two hundred years the 
interest in subjects such as this has practically 
disappeared, and men may have contrary beliefs 
with regard to them or no beliefs and yet not 
be separated. If our neighbour is not guilty of 
one or two disreputable sins, we shake hands with 
him and ask no further questions. In fact we 
pride ourselves on our indifference as a precious I 
result of enlightenment. The Puritan thought, \> 
on the contrary, that life is controlled by our re- 
lationship to that which is beyond this lower 
world, and though he may have been wrong in 
details he was right in principle. Society is at 1 
this moment kept together by habits which were ^ 
formed by ideas. 

One last word. Puritanism has done noble 
service, but we have seen enough of it even in 
Bunyan to show that it is not an entirely accurate 
version of God's message to man. It is the most 
distinct, energetic and salutary movement in our 



222 JOHN BUNYAN 

history, and no other religion has surpassed it 
in preaching the truths by which men and nations 
must exist. Nevertheless we need Shakespeare as 
well as Bunyan, and oscillate between the Pilgrim^ s 
Progress and As you like it. We cannot bring 
ourselves Into a unity. The time is yet to come 
when we shall live by a faith which is a harmony 
of all our faculties. A glimpse was caught of 
such a gospel nineteen centuries ago in Galilee, 
but It has vanished. 



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